The Fire Colony
by Rasputin Zero
Summary: Book 3: Fire. Chapter 2. Sequel to 'The Dead Boy'. The team needs to enter the Fire Nation, and persuade a renegade Earth Kingdom Colonel to help them. But the Colonel's plans make Sokka uneasy, and they run into some unwelcome old 'friends'. Complete.
1. Homusubi

**Avatar: The Last Airbender**

**Created by Michael Dante Dimartino and Bryan Konietzko**

**Book 3: Fire**

**Chapter 2: The Fire Colony**

* * *

There hadn't been a cloud in the sky all day, but it wasn't dry by any means. The humidity was ever-present in the trees and bushes of the densely-forested North-West of the Earth Kingdom. The leaves were lush and green, soaking up more sunlight than they could stand, but the greenness of the leaves didn't spread far beyond the plants, whose trunks were several shades of rusty reds and browns. The redness spread to the road, and the very air the forest inhabited. These were not native Earth Kingdom plants, but under careful cultivation they had flourished. These were plants used to harsh conditions, and in more gentle climates they consumed everything around them. Everything about the Fire Nation was obsessed with consumption, with absorption, with the elimination of competition and smoothing of the fractured fault lines of the world with their own kind. Some day the whole world would be like this. The Fire Nation was already something completely different to this, and _needed _these colonies of greenery in order to survive. To exist, the Fire Nation needed to turn the whole world into its former self. Then it would turn the world black.

Consumption was foremost on the minds of most of the Avatar's companions, chiefly the consumption of fluids. Sokka was starting to suspect that the Fire Nation could track them down with the vast trail of sweat they were leaving behind. Toph didn't feel particularly exerted, but there was a limit to the amount of heat she could stand, and she was definitely reaching it, even though Momo's frequent flapping of his own wings to cool himself down while perched on the Earthbender's shoulder was having a pleasant effect on her temperature. Katara had passed that point long ago. She had grown up around _ice_, she wasn't used to heat, and that was coupled with a…certain lack of motivation. Aang didn't hold any of these worries, partially out of a mystic detachment from the world, but mostly because out of all of them his Fire Nation clothes were the only ones woven with hot weather in mind. His eyes were focussed forward underneath his short, growing stubble of brown hair, and his sandal-covered feet walked with a regular rhythm. The others were beginning to struggle.

It was heading further into the afternoon, and they had travelled many _li _south from when they decided their course of action yesterday at noon. That decision was final enough that apart from discussing the paths of various roads, co-ordinating replenishment and rest alongside the thankfully plentiful fresh-water streams, and Toph's words of warning about an ever-increasing frequency of Fire Nation patrols, barely a word had passed among the group for the two days they had been travelling. Momo's constant panting didn't strictly count. Exhaustion makes one outspoken, however, and Sokka, finally articulating the question that had been preying on his mind for the entire journey, sparked the first real discussion they'd had since Aang decided they were going to the Fire Nation.

"So…_how _exactly are we going to reach the Fire Nation?" Sokka asked.

Aang slowed down, as evidently it was a very serious question, and turned innocently towards Sokka, responding, "you mean…you haven't been working on a plan?"

"What!? How can I plan for something I've no idea about!?" Sokka waved his arms in exhausted anger, "we've just been going in a general southerly direction for two days. Now, while the Fire Nation _is _that way, last I checked, only Katara is able to walk on water, and we can't use her as a substitute for Appa."

"Nah, a decent saddle'll fit her just right, I reckon," Toph joked, prompting an irritated bonk on the head from Katara, who was taking this whole quest somewhat uncertainly. Momo, who had lapsed into a heat-induced exhaustion for the last several _li_, was forced awake by the annoyed shudder from Toph, and looked around in confusion.

"We'll need a boat, and sneak into the Fire Nation that way," Sokka decided, letting the seriousness of his tone suppress his urge to laugh out loud at Toph's comment, "we might be able to find a fishing village near the coast, and if we go far enough south we'll be able to hitch a ride in a place outside of Fire Nation control, so long as we conceal our identities, which won't be hard without Appa along."

"You saw the state of the Fire Nation blockade last time we saw it," Katara reminded the 'military genius', "we could barely get through it on Appa, let along some kind of rickety wooden fishing vessel."

"And it'll take _days _to get south enough to be outside Fire Nation control," Toph pointed out, with a hint of concern, "Iroh might not have that long."

"The alternative is trying to sneak on-board a Fire Navy ship," Sokka laid down the options, "that's far too dangerous."

Toph, as blind as she was, had to blink in incredulity at the concept of 'too dangerous'. While Momo had briefly lifted off of her shoulder to gain some nutrition, she said matter-of-factly, "so?"

"Let's…just try to think this through," Katara appealed to reason in hot and flustered exasperation, "are we sure this is a good idea _at all_? Heading into the heart of the Fire Nation?"

"We don't have a choice!" Sokka went to great pains to emphasise, "I don't like it any more than you do, but so far I haven't seen any convincing signs pointing to anywhere else. Once we find General Iroh, then a few more options are open to us, but not before that."

"But we're heading into the _Fire Nation_, Sokka!" Katara felt herself get angrier every passing second, "the source of all the hurt and pain in the world right now, and we don't even know what it looks like!"

"Oh come on! It's not hard to imagine!" Sokka crossed his arms and closed his eyes as if recanting a well-known truth, "it is a place of black soot and brimstone where fire belches out of the burning embers of the underworld, and dark, hellish _oni_ scour the earth eating the flesh of the living, forming Firebenders from the remains of rotten flesh and where women of ill-repute spend their efforts working infernal baby-gobbling machines instead of cooking meals and cleaning their lodgings like us decent Water Tribe folk."

In an earlier time, Katara would have burst out laughing at such a brain-stultingly moronic description, but nowadays she just looked annoyed, "'women of ill-repute'?"

"That's how old man Hukato always described it!" Sokka defended himself.

"'Old man Hukato' never saw a decent day's work in his ninety-four years on this earth, let alone the Fire Nation," Katara recalled of the old coot from their village, constant fixture of their childhood whenever Gran-Gran's stories got too staid, "and neither have you. No one has!"

"That can't be right…" Toph interjected, while Momo had dropped his piece of fruit to the ground as heat exhaustion caught up to the winged lemur, "in a _hundred years_ there has to be at least _one _person from the other nations who's been to the Fire Nation."

"Sure, probably hundreds, just none that have ever come _back_," Sokka corrected Toph, "even prisoners-of-war are never taken there, dad told me. Except those the Firebenders never want anyone to see again…"

Sokka drifted into contemplation, as the fate of Suki weighed on his mind. He hadn't heard a word about her in over a month, except when he _thought _she'd come to Ba Sing Se, only to find it was Azula and her cronies in disguise. And with her not appearing on the Fire Nation's Most Wanted list, he had begun fearing the worst. He knew she would never have given up. In the void of the conversation, the argument about whether or not going to the Fire Nation was more than a suicidal idea drifted away into a sullen fact that they knew absolutely nothing about what they were getting themselves into. Aang had had enough with falling into endless voids, and sought to rectify this, cautiously.

"Uh…I've been to the Fire Nation," Aang spoke quietly, having spent most of the discussion on the sidelines. This statement took Sokka with more surprise than was strictly warranted, but at least it distracted him from thoughts about Suki.

"What!?" Sokka remarked startlingly, "since when!?"

"Since…a hundred years ago…" Aang commented as if it should have been obvious, "I did tell you I had a friend there, right?"

"No! You told me no such thing!" Sokka reacted angrily, "nice backing me up there, champ! It's good to feel frikkin' _appreciated_!"

"Calm down, you'll burst a blood vessel," Toph intervened, as the outburst had briefly woken Momo up, "but it's been over a century since you saw the Fire Nation, Aang. A lot changes in that time."

"Don't worry, I'm starting to get used to things changing," Aang reflexively felt the massive scar on his back, which was fast becoming an annoying habit, "besides, it might not have changed that much. Omashu hadn't changed a bit in the hundred years I hadn't been there…before it fell, anyway."

"Yeah, but that's the Earth Kingdom for you, we don't change much," Toph placed a hand on her hip assertively, "it's not in our nature. But this is the Fire Nation we're talking about. Look at this place, annexed Fire Nation territory. In days past my grandpa would drone on endlessly about the _endless green fields _his peasants toiled on up here or something dumb like that. Now look at it! The Fire Nation changes, shifts, morphs. It's like water except it _goes uphill_. You get that?"

"That's…weirdly perceptive of you, Toph…" Katara commented, "but she's got a point. The Fire Nation as it is now is going to be unrecognizable to the Fire Nation you knew."

"It's better than nothing, isn't it?" Aang shrugged, "and we don't have a choice, it's where we have to go."

"So…did it have the fire and the brimstone and the flesh-eating _oni _and the women of ill-repute?" Sokka queried.

Aang wasn't sure how to answer that. His experiences of the Fire Nation had been brief, but even in those days it didn't seem like the _source of all evil _or anything of the kind. It was warm, pretty tropical, had a lot of fishing ports and steam mills, and the people there were passionate and poetically-minded. And hungry. He remembered there were a lot of hungry people. But that was all he knew, and he'd seen only a small fraction of the place. But it was too much info to really condense into a form Sokka would have found satisfying, so he kept it simple, "uh…not the parts I saw."

"What? Old man Hukato _was_ making it all up?" Sokka looked into the distance contemplatively, "who knew?"

Katara felt like beating her brother's brains out with something big and heavy, but Toph intervened before that plan could come to fruition with a sudden exclamation that Momo finally stayed awake after, flying off of the blind girl's shoulder, "guards! Coming from the south!"

"That's the fifth patrol in the last hour…" Katara commented on the sharp increase in Fire Army activity the further south they were heading, and quite frankly was finding it tiresome to jump into the bushes so often, while coddling an alerted Momo in her hands, "something must be up in this area."

"Whatever it is, we'll have to find out later," Aang was beginning to wander towards the trees to the right of them, "we need to hide…"

"Wait Aang!" Sokka placed a hand on Aang's shoulder, "this could be the chance we've been looking for! Do your thing with the 'cute-'n-innocent Fire Nation kid' act and try to get some info out of them! We'll hide and keep watch."

Aang, as detached as he was from the normal rules of cause and effect, nevertheless felt a distant pang of annoyance that he was the one taking all the risks, but the rest of the group was already hiding in the trees and the Fire Nation patrol was within eye-shot before it crossed Aang's mind to argue. Momo purred as he was concealed underneath Katara's arms, and Aang was left alone in the dusty red road. Breathing himself calm, his concerns lifted effortlessly, and he was an innocent 12-year-old again. He bounded towards the approaching soldiers, smiling and waving his hand like he was genuinely excited to see them, "hey there!"

The commander of the sizeable patrol, consisting of 12 soldiers, halted his men and looked a little surprised, "hi, kid. What are doing all the way out her by yourself?"

"Sorry to bother you, sir…" the red-clad boy halted before the squad and seemed briefly overcome with nervousness, twisting a sandal in the dust, "I was just travelling with my family and I got a little lost."

"You shouldn't be out here on your own, boy," the captain leant down to the short-haired child's eye level, "there's all kinds of bad people around this area. It just isn't safe for you to be wandering around like this."

"It won't happen again, sir," the boy looked up pleadingly, "I can manage on my own, I just need to get my bearings. I was walking with my relatives…we were going to visit the Fire Nation, y'see sir…and I got distracted by these mongoose-rabbits and I lost sight of them…I think I missed a turning a while back, but I don't think they're far. I just need to know where they're going."

"Man, he's good," Sokka whispered in admiration at how convincing Aang was, hidden deep in the crowded vegetation.

"Yeah…a little _too _good in my opinion," Toph whispered contentiously. She could feel the 12-year-old boy's heartbeat and found nearly completely stable, with only small deviances to indicate he was more than bending the truth a little. The child had attained a mastery over his own functionings that crept her out a little, even if it was handy.

It did more than creep Katara out. She felt that same nervous uncertainty she had felt earlier when Aang was fooling the Fire Nation patrol in the clearing where they discovered Iroh had escaped. It was something she felt whenever she considered the clothes the boy was wearing. It was more than simply the worrying nature of possible losing him…it was a small creeping horror that he was turning into something she feared more than anything in this world. Such fears were foolish, and she knew it, since she was concerned enough about getting Aang to feel alive again. It was just so nerve-wracking. The moments when he seemed more like the Aang she knew were more frequent, but the swings back into detachment were becoming practically schizophrenic. And here was the small, fragile boy, last hope for peace in this world, acting like an innocent little Fire Nation kid. She felt more scared for him than ever.

"The nearest port is Ryojun, sir, but that's dozens of _li _away," a private piped up behind the captain, "and there's a _dan _of roads leading that way."

The captain, taking this fact on board, pinched his nose in frustration, looking back at the small boy, "listen, we can't just leave you at the mercy of fate. How about you come along with us, and when we get back to our base we track down your relatives? They must be worried sick about you…"

"No! No…uh…they put a lot of trust in me!" Aang tried to cover his tracks, "I'm sure I could catch up with them if I knew the way…maybe…a map would be better?"

The way the boy panicked at his ruse falling apart seemed to abruptly bring Aang back to both Toph's and Katara's senses. His heartbeat was starting to beat widely and his visible nervousness was patently no longer an act. Katara felt herself smiling, even though it meant Aang was in trouble. Sokka tensed up, remarking irritably, "can't he keep to the damned script?"

"There's no way you'll be able to find your parents on your own, kid," the captain remarked, "and they shouldn't be hanging around this neck of the woods anyway. Honestly, leaving you behind, it's disgraceful. Isn't it corporal?"

"Absolutely, sir," the soldier nearest to the captain concurred, "this kind of behaviour is unacceptable for members of the Fire Nation."

"It's not what you think!" Aang waved his hands and smiled nervously, "it's just…my family's _really _big. They probably haven't even noticed I'm gone! Eheh…they're probably getting worried by now anyway, and I don't want to distract you guys from the _really important _work you do!"

Sokka gently lowered his back-pack to the ground and drew the boomerang from his back and peered carefully through the leaves in the bush, analyzing the situation, "they're getting too suspicious. We can't let Aang be captured. When I give the word, Toph, bury them in quick sand, while Katara and I try to get behind them and take out the stragglers."

The other members of the group nodded affirmatively, their amusement at Aang's self coming back into glorious water-colour tempered by fear for his physical well-being, being as he was trying to reason with a group of armed Fire Soldiers. Momo remained absolutely still. It was then that Toph felt surprise at feeling many extra pairs of boots emerging in all directions.

"Protecting the people of the Fire Nation _is _our _really important _work," the Captain rose to his feet and crossed his arms, feeling his sympathy for the boy drain away with every prevarication, "and something about you is making me wonder whether you appreciate the work we do."

"No! No! I'm really proud of what you're doing!" Aang reasoned desperately, "but you don't need to worry about me! Really! My relatives aren't that far away, I just need to know the local roads a bit more…without pressing on your time too much…eheh."

It was one nervous laugh too many for the captain, and he stared down the boy while the soldiers behind them raised their weapons in preparation, "you aren't really looking for your relatives, are you son?"

The look of nervous excitement on Aang's face gave way to a disappointed annoyance under that short brown crop of hair, "why can't you be idiots like normal guards?"

Sokka, taking this as the final cue towards a showdown, raised his boomerang in preparation for giving Toph the word to attack. But, just as the boomerang was coming down assertively, the ground beneath his feet seemed to shift as particles of dust flowed inward towards the road. Either side of Aang and the Fire Nation patrol massive liquid pillars of earth shot out of the ground and converged like a pair of hands over the startled soldiers underneath, who panicked in the face of such a wild outburst of dried mud and attempted to run away from under the collapsing tunnel formed around them, while Aang, surprised but still collected, attempted to leap backwards out of the earth-trap. It was to no avail, and they were all buried in the avalanche of dirt up to their necks, coughing and spluttering. Stuck fast, Aang and the soldiers heaved fruitlessly against the mound of dust that had appeared around them, blocking the entire road. Sokka's boomerang dropped limply to the Water warrior's side, and he looked at the almost instantaneous attack in shocked, and slightly impressed, surprise.

"Toph, I didn't mean for you to bury _all _of them…" Sokka looked behind himself to see that Toph was not actually in any kind of Earthbending stance, and was simply lying on the ground with her head in her hands, looking substantially annoyed.

"That wasn't me," Toph drawled irritably, pouting at being spectacularly upstaged. Both Sokka and Katara whirled around to see leaping out of the bushes a little up the road from them at least two dozen men, dressed in casual shades of green but all either physically well-built or wielding something very deadly-looking, approaching the buried mass of soldiers and Avatar from either side, staring intently, determinedly, and _angrily _at the red-clad people. The captain of the Fire Nation patrol managed to free one hand enough to push his helmet out of his eyes, looking at the assembled burley young men with astonishment. The realisation spreading on his face was palpable.

"Oh…phooey," the captain remarked disappointingly, "three days till the end of my tour and _this _happens."

"What do we do?" Katara whispered questioningly, calming a rattled Momo. They were concealed in the shadows so that only small pin-pricks of light penetrated through and touched their faces, while the Earthbenders and assorted weapons-wielders were positioned with some caution along the edge of the road. If they moved any further they'd be spotted. Sokka held an arm out before the other two members of the group and crouched. He wanted to know what he was dealing with first.

Sokka soon got his answer when another strong man stepped out of the bushes on the other side of the road. Unlike the others, he was clothed in something much closer to an Earth Army uniform, though slightly modified to cope with the summer heat. This was an altogether more familiar face, and one he would've done well to anticipate: the face of Colonel Yuung, slightly hidden in the shade of his wide hat, looking stern in the face of the enemy. He spoke with some gravity, "look on the bright side. Your tour ended a little early. I might consider letting you go home if you took every other of you metal-heads with you."

"You…" the captain was shocked at the sight of the man more than he'd been shocked at the sight of the collapsing tunnel, and angrily sneered first at the Colonel and then at the small short-haired boy who was still struggling ineffectually at getting himself out of the earth trap, "you tricked us! You conniving little brat!"

Aang, struggling with eyes screwed shut and teeth gritted as he was, didn't like to be called a conniving little brat, and turned towards the captain pleadingly, "what? No I didn't! I…"

Aang stopped abruptly as he was shrouded in shadow, the humid air around him suddenly and inexplicably cooling. He looked up at the gaze of the stern and grim-faced Colonel, which somehow chilled his heart, as the fierce and stone-faced man looked down upon him with something like authority, and something else…a deep-seated hatred that was in him the last time they'd met. In the months since, it seemed to have grown, and intently focused on him in particular. It was with an eye-opening realisation that Aang figured out what he was focusing on…a Fire Nation child.

"Uh…he's with us, actually…" a teenaged boy spoke up behind the Colonel, and his stare gratefully lifted from Aang's face and towards the straggle of Water Tribe peasants, runaway Earth Kingdom noble heiresses and winged lemurs that retreated nervously from the collection of clenched fists, shiny pikes and sharp, pointy objects that suddenly surrounded them. As the Colonel's glare lifted to be replaced with surprise, he called off the irregulars from their fighting poses.

"Sokka?" the Colonel wondered questioningly, "Katara? What are you two doing all the way out here?"

"I could ask the same thing about you!" Sokka approached with a disarming smile along with the others, "what are all of you doing this far north?"

"We'll have time to answer each other's questions later," the Colonel responded warmly, before giving Aang another glare, "except one…who is this Fire Nation boy and why is he 'with you'?"

"He's not a…!" Katara exclaimed before being quickly kicked in the shin by a still-smiling Sokka.

"He's...a friend of ours! He's turned against the Fire Nation and come over to our side…" Sokka explained quickly while Katara winced, "his name's…Kazuki. He'll be no trouble at all, quiet as a mouse, honest."

The Colonel continued eyeing the small boy in a suspicious and untrusting fashion, and barely a heartbeat stirred. Only Aang was within close enough hearing distance to hear the Colonel mutter under his breath, "so the Avatar really is dead…" Yuung revealed his decision when he turned his determined eyes back to Sokka and Katara, stating in no uncertain terms, "if he so much as twitches in my direction I'm sending him to the roof of the sky."

Colonel Yuung raised one of his legs and pushed it into the ground with excessive force, and without turning his head shunted Aang out of the ground and onto his backside with a small yelp. Sprawled out on the dirt mound, the young 'Kazuki' was thus born in the minds of everyone around him: a small, vulnerable, apologetic and spineless Fire Nation boy, rubbing his behind in unassuming pain. He got to his own two feet and brushed off his bare knees while Yuung marched away from them back towards the forest.

"Okay men, get them shackled and hooded! I don't want a single eyeball peeking from those Firebender stooges," the Colonel ordered. The men nodded in acknowledgement, and despite their casual attire they acted with the utmost professionalism. Although some kept a suspicious eye on 'Kazuki' as he rejoined the rest of the group, Sokka, Katara and Toph were broadly accepted into the team. Their reputation had preceded them, and it seems there was an implicit assumption that they were obliged to accompany them.

"So…is this good?" Katara asked out loud, stroking Momo in uncertainty.

"They're not trying to kill us, so it's going wonderfully by our standards," Toph decided, beginning to follow the team as they took their prisoners and disappeared into the humid forest. The rest of the group felt no reason to argue, and walked into the bushes on the other side of the road with her. The road was flattened, and to any unsuspecting passer-by it would have seemed like absolutely nothing had happened along this quiet stretch of dusty, red highway. Only the gentle rustle of the trees indicated anything out of the ordinary in the draining red light at the end of a beautiful summer's day.

**To Be Continued…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06


	2. City Of Brahma

They had walked for quite a distance…non-stop…_for the whole day_. Even Toph was getting a little irritated at the distances they were having to travel. Their feet ached, their legs ached, their backs ached, their heads ached and their stomachs were roaring at the indignity of it all. But the irregulars had yet to stop walking, and it was getting hard to keep pace with the strong men and not lose sight of them amongst the dense trees and pointy branches, especially as night began creeping up on them. Lighting up torches would have been suicidal in the territory, and despite the increasingly heavy burden of the backpacks they were wearing they didn't dare stop for a breather. They took one of their early hints from the green-clothed guerrillas in front of them: for goodness' sake, if you're travelling across continents on the run from the authorities…_travel light_.

With all the effort at catching up with the irregulars, the group hadn't had much of a chance at any discussion, but as they travelled further they began hearing the loud roar of a river nearby. Although distant and muffled through the canopy of the wood, it allowed the group to exchange low whispers about the predicament they had found themselves in. But before they dared do so, Katara made a well-aimed kick at Sokka's shin through the shroud of gloom.

"Ow!" Sokka exclaimed as loudly as he dared with the guerrillas close by, briefly hopping through the undergrowth in pain, "what was _that _for?"

"_That hurt_, you big dumb jerk," Katara argued pointedly before petting a half-asleep Momo to ease her tension, "so tell me, 'mastermind', why do we have to call Aang 'Kazuki' for the rest of this trip?"

"What? It's a perfectly good Fire Nation-sounding name," Sokka shrugged philosophically, "lots of 'k's, lots of 'z's, a 'u' in the middle, I'm kinda proud of it myself…"

"That's not what I mean!" Katara whispered harshly, "why couldn't we tell them Aang was really…Aang? That the Avatar is alive?"

"We couldn't risk it with those Fire Nation soldiers near-by," Sokka asserted, staring ahead in grim certitude, "it's safer all-round if we keep Aang's identity a secret."

Aang kept quiet, feeling for whatever reason that he didn't really have a say in this kind of decision. Toph regarded Sokka a little more suspiciously. His heartbeat raised a little, and it was obvious that it wasn't the whole reason for his secrecy. Feeling a little more self-conscious, Toph wandered closer to Katara until she was walking alongside the Waterbender.

"Hey, Katara, can I have Momo back?" Toph requested, and Katara considered the request carefully before leaning over to perch the slowly awakening winged lemur on the blind girl's shoulder.

"Sure…" Katara leaned back and brushed her fingers through her long, unkempt hair in a teasing expression of her own pleasant curiosity, "I never thought you as someone who could be so attached to small furry animals."

"Oh, there's nothing sentimental about it. I've just come to realise that having a winged lemur perched on my shoulder comes with certain convenient perks for someone like me," Toph corrected Katara, and just to illustrate the point, the sleepy animal jolted itself wide awake with a screech upon hearing a snap in the twigs above, and stood straight upright on Toph's shoulder catch a piece of fruit a few inches before it struck Toph's head. Toph took the fruit from Momo's gradually calming hands and bit into it smarmily, addressing Katara with a sly smile, "case in point."

Katara raised an eyebrow at Toph's utilitarian definition of close pets, before wondering out loud, "where do you think we're headed, anyway?"

"I'm not sure, but I think we're heading deeper into the Earth Kingdom," Aang's geographical know-how emerged from his spindly self, "we've been going south-east for a few hours now, so that river we're hearing must be the Yalujiang. It's famous for these twin pillars that lie either side of its passage to the Mo Ce Sea. They hang over the sides of the river like icicles and have this lattice-like structure, inside which are these pools where these amazing water creatures live. I've always wanted to see that too…"

Aang sighed in wistfulness before clearing his mind and marching along. Sokka, realising something, pulled one of the maps from his satchel bag and unrolled it, trying to see glimpses of the parchment through the gaps of starlight falling through the trees. In concentration, the warrior extrapolated, "you know, if I was some evil conniving Fire Nation general carving up bits of the Earth Kingdom for permanent annexation, this would be an excellent place to draw the border."

"Excellent supposition," Yuung's voice made Sokka's head snap abruptly upwards as the voice was uncomfortably close. While he was peering at the map, much of the forest in front of them had abruptly disappeared, and in front of them lay instead Yuung and his band of guerrillas, the dozen hooded and whimpering Fire Soldiers, a sandy embankment and a wide river that looked almost grey in the small light of the crescent moon. Yuung was looking at them all impatiently with crossed arms, "except you forgot one thing about us Earthbenders: we make our _own _borders."

The Colonel spun around and adopted a stance in mid-air, shifting his weight to his right foot and planting it before him, thrusting both his clenched fists forward and up. The ground shook and a sizeable hole opened in a rocky outcrop that hung over the river, inside which was a large, heavily reinforced tunnel. Colonel Yuung straightened up before turning back towards the slightly stunned group, staring fiercely, "I want that Fire Nation brat walking where I can see him, understand?"

The others nodded, and the group made their way down the sandy embankment towards the hole. Outside the tree canopy, the starlight defined their features, evanescently blue and heavily lined with shadow, as they emerged one by one and walked carefully past the irregulars. While treading through the sand, Toph suddenly stopped with a quizzical expression on her face, leading Sokka to nearly collide into her, and she faced down-river as a low rumble lightly reverberated through the air. Momo's fur stood on end as high-frequency sounds set his teeth on edge, and the rest of the group turned to look in the direction Toph was looking. Near the horizon, a number of stars were shading out of existence as something drifted upwards to block the view. Toph, figuring out what that rumble was, said "something really big _exploded _down that way…"

"Construction work. The Fire Nation's been clearing the way for something called a 'railroad' to be built between the Earth King's territory and the Fire Colonies," Yuung informed the group of the source of the explosion, before adding with a scent of satisfaction, "we're blowing it up next week."

"Ha! That'll show 'em!" Sokka joined in with Yuung's smugness, which abruptly disappeared from the Colonel's star-lit features as he eyed the group impatiently.

"I didn't tell you to stop," he reminded the group, the members of which collectively winced at the directedness of the remark. They turned and entered into the dark tunnel, with Toph confidently, if poutingly, leading the way. Sokka followed sullenly, while Katara paused to gulp down some nervousness before entering the tunnel, bending over in order to fit inside the hole. Aang led up the rear, carefully watched by Yuung, who followed right behind the group and led his fighters and the prisoners inside.

While Toph strode ahead, despite Momo's increasing fretfulness at the utter abundance of the dark, she eventually had to slow down as she realised that the others were finding it hard to walk forwards into such lack of light. It was all the same to her, though the flow of liquid a short distance over their heads and the ever-present dampness brought with it an unshakeable insecurity and some extremely unwelcome memories. She wondered if the others were feeling the same way, and sure enough Katara was trying to calm herself down from a panicky heartbeat. The Waterbender could handle the river above fine, but Toph knew what else she was thinking about. For Toph, the blind girl had the comfort of feeling solid earth beneath her toes, but the feel of squishy, amorphous blind spots frayed her nerves. Sokka paused just behind her as the door of the tunnel closed and Toph guessed that whatever this weird thing called 'light' was, it wasn't coming in anymore. Then she could feel a frail pair of footsteps approaching in the low-ceilinged tube of robe, coupled with a little warmth. She almost imperceptibly noticed the quickening of Aang's heartbeat, which was unusual in itself since it had remained almost monolithically stable for the entire journey.

"So who're these sorry varmints, then?" the bare-footed old man in brown rags holding a flaming torch was obviously not a part of Yuung's professional team, being obstinate and mean-eyed, but he still showed, in his own way, deference towards the Colonel. Colonel Yuung, for his part, made light of the man's paranoia.

"These 'sorry varmints' were the Avatar's closest companions, and our honoured guests," the Colonel leaned over and smiled from behind the group, before turning his eyes suspiciously towards 'Kazuki', "except that kid. Supposedly he's an ally, but keep him on a short leash for the next day at least, you hear?"

The old man peered closely at the small boy, innocently looking from one pair of paranoid eyeballs to the other with unassuming fright. For a moment, Aang's eyes rested on the torch, which instinctively drew his field of vision as the small flame danced, flickered and breathed. The man holding it, noticing the red-clothed boy's line of sight, turned the flame away from Aang as if keeping a dangerous object out of arm's reach, glaring at the boy the whole time. He addressed Yuung once again, "so how far down does the Earth reach, stranger?"

"'The Earth reaches into the depths of our bones'," Yuung recited impatiently, "it always _has _reached into the depths of our bones, it always _will _reach into the depths of our bones, and it will continue reaching into the depths of our bones _the next time you ask_."

"Don't blame me for keeping up one of your stupid ideas…" the old man complained, turning from the front of the procession and leading the torch down the narrow tunnels. With something to see in front of them, the group began to walk again, bending their backs further to get through the narrower sections under the middle of the river. The tunnel kept going generally downwards, levelling off after a few minutes but never rising.

The dampness receded after some time, and the tunnel gradually became chunkier and more solid. This gave Toph greater confidence in the firmness of the foundations. She didn't need Momo to tell if anything was going to fall on her head anymore, but at the very least his rising and falling nervousness at the surroundings gave Toph a decently good idea of how much light was in the tunnel. She was finding his claustrophobia a little funny and despite the continuing awkward silence between the group and Yuung's irregulars the atmosphere seemed to ease a little. This may have had something to do with being away from Fire Nation-controlled territory, but relaxing one's guard at any time was a risky proposition for them in particular.

After a while, the light from the torch struck a blank wall at the end of the tunnel. Placing the torch in a holder affixed to the side of the tunnel, the old man took up a stance and dropped his arms before the wall, bringing it vertically downwards into the ground and letting light spill into a large, dark space beyond. As the old man reclaimed the torch and walked forward, the edges of the basement they had found themselves in came into light. A ladder was attached to the far wall, leading up to a wooden door embedded in the ceiling, while a substantial series of tunnels led off in all directions. While the group was wandering out of the tunnel, Yuung's men emerged from behind them and quickly went about their business.

"Get the names of those soldiers as soon as possible. We don't want the Fire Nation claiming they didn't _really _have captured soldiers like last time," Yuung ordered as his men led the Fire Soldiers down an adjacent tunnel and gradually disappeared, while the old man re-entered the tunnel and bended it closed behind him, taking his torch with him. Yuung took a couple of small rocks out of his pocket and scraped them against each other over an unlit torch in the corner of the room, which promptly lit. He picked up the torch and turned to the assembled companions of the boy formerly known as the Avatar, "now we can talk."

"Okay, now we're away from the Fire Soldier's ears, I think it's safe to tell you," Katara addressed Yuung seriously and indicated towards Aang, "this boy…'Kazuki'…he's really Aan-"

Katara winced in pain as Sokka made another swift kick to her shin, smiling at the Colonel as if nothing had happened, "he's really…_anxious_…as…we all are! Anxious to find out where exactly this place is."

The Colonel looked towards the short-haired boy who had taken to theatrically twiddling his fingers, "he should be anxious about a lot more than just that, but it was a good idea to wait until now before asking." Yuung wandered over to the ladder and placed his torch in a holder next to it, beginning to climb one rung at a time, suggesting on the fourth rung without turning his head, "You can see for yourself if you follow me."

As the rest of the group moved to follow, Katara was still half-paralysed in wincing pain, and harshly whispered to Sokka, "did you _have _to kick the same place _twice_?"

"I wouldn't have to if you could just keep your mouth shut about our dear friend 'Kazuki'," Sokka argued quietly, placing a hand on one of the ladder's rungs after Aang. As his back was turned he received a short, sharp kick in his calf, and paused in minor agony before turning back to a furious Katara, "yeah, real mature, little sis."

Katara, staring intently at Sokka, moved her hands to open her water pouch. Getting the message, Sokka quickly turned and climbed up the ladder after Toph and Aang. Katara moved her hands away from her pouch and onto the ladder beneath her brother, but still stared intently at the back of the warrior's head. Yuung, now at the top of the ladder, knocked slowly on the bottom of the wooden trap-door four times, and quickly three times, waiting a few seconds before the door opened and more natural light entered the gloomy basement.

"Find any interesting knick-knacks down in the basement, sir?" a young voice came from above, as Yuung clambered quickly out of the opening in the floor of the room above and stood next to it, allowing the rest of the group to emerge from underneath him.

"Oh yes. 12 shiny pebbles and a few companion pieces to the four-coloured vase that was…smashed to bits," Yuung spoke cryptically to the young boy who couldn't have been that much older than Aang, but still sported two streaking burn marks on his cheek. At the news of the vase, the boy's smile fell, and he looked at the four people emerging from the hole.

Toph was first to climb out, having little difficulty getting to her feet, while Aang stepped straight onto the floor from the last rung of the ladder. Sokka had to use his hands to get out of the hole properly, while Aang stood to the side to help Katara up. The room was small in comparison to the basement, consisting of small, Spartan dimensions and a tiny window to let in the dim star-light. Another wooden door led out, but there was nothing in the small room other than that except a thin futon that had been rolled over. The trap-door lay right next to it, so presumably the futon was for the express purpose of hiding the entrance to the tunnels below. The young boy was dressed in green rags and sported a scruffy haircut, but still had a sword belt around his waist. Upon seeing 'Kazuki', the bright young boy suddenly came over grim-faced and reached for his sword.

"No need to worry," Yuung stayed the boy's hand sympathetically, "this shiny pebble's taking a place in our collection…for now."

The Colonel said the last two words as a warning, and Aang got the message clearly enough, nodding in recognition. The young boy relaxed his grip on his knife, but not his attitude towards 'Kazuki'. He did, however, end up distracted by the rapid ball of white fur that shot out of the hole and flew a complete circle around the room before resting on the open hole that served as a window inside the hut. Momo leaned over and peered out at the sight. The others crowded over to look over the winged lemur's shoulder and saw the outside of the hut, a long series of stone rectangular huts dimly lit by infrequent torches, around which plentiful bundles of cloth lay scattered along the muddy road that separated the hut from the row of huts symmetrical to it. It took close examination before they noticed there were actually people inside those bundles of rags. They were protecting themselves against the mild cold of the early summer night, and didn't look like they had any place to stay. The huts didn't have doors, and bundles of cloth seemed to be piled just as haphazardly _inside _them as _outside_. Behind the row of huts was a wall no taller than a typical person, and beyond that wall a number of trees that could be seen by dim torch-light.

"We can't stay here and gawp all day," the Colonel reminded the group, "I'll show you to a place you can get some rest. You'd better appreciate it, because that's more than most people here get."

The group, all seemingly distracted in thought at the sight of the place, looked back and drifted into line behind Colonel Yuung as he opened the door out of the hut. Toph once again offered an arm that the dazed and tired Momo dutifully took, and followed straight behind Katara. The Waterbending girl was struck by an immense wall of frustration and melancholy as soon as she stepped out the door and saw something like the view through the window mirrored to infinity. Huts lay in approximate, haphazard rows that sometimes merged and coalesced with each other, as huge numbers of hungry, desperate people lay sandwiched between them, trying to claim whatever source of heat they could. Kids played between the rows of blanket-clad people unattended, trying to find whatever distraction they could create out of their spare time. Most of their parents had given up, and simply nursed their empty bowls. A small girl had briefly stopped building a pile of rocks to stand straight up and salute Yuung as he walked past. Yuung didn't seem to notice, but Katara could tell that the people in whatever place this was treated the man in the makeshift uniform with a large amount of respect.

"What is this place?" Katara asked out loud, her eyes continuously distracted by her surroundings.

"They don't have a name for it," Yuung described without turning his head, "it's a refugee camp, one of a number of them that lie just behind the front-line. Many of the refugees from Omashu ended up here."

"Why didn't they go to Ba Sing Se?" Sokka enquired, just about keeping up with the Colonel's quick pace.

"Many of them did, those who decided that they would never get their homes back," Yuung declared, "for those of us who couldn't accept that, these are the places we ended up in. These camps been around for a lot longer than us. Some date back almost to the very beginning of the War."

"So these people have been living like this for a _century_?" Toph openly questioned. It seemed to stretch plausibility, "why are they still here, now the war's over?"

Yuung stopped and turned his head towards the massless sea of rags, "because the war's not over for these people. They were driven out of their homes by the Fire Nation, replaced by settlers who took everything they had. Now our leaders are telling them that there's 'peace', but what kind of peace can it be when the Fire Nation is still everywhere on Earth Kingdom soil? When the Firebenders still have seventy-six military bases across territory that doesn't even belong to them?"

"I thought it was seventy-seven?" Aang interrupted quietly. Yuung's stern glare was sufficient to force the short-haired boy to explain himself, "sorry…it's just…I heard someone talk about Base 77…"

"Ach, we made that stuff up. It was one of Bumi's ideas to motivate our soldiers better if there was some unnamed Fire Nation base with a random number attached to it where all kinds of horrors could be left to the imagination. These people don't need delusions, they need their homes back," Yuung began walking again, indicating the sprawling mass around him, "these people's lives were taken away from them, and now the Earth King says that they can never have them back, that their lives are the Fire Nation's now, and they have no right to reclaim them as their own. They can't accept that, and neither can I."

"That's terrible…" Katara mumbled, letting the incalculable number of the poor and tired and vulnerable wash over her vision. She was lost for words. Aang looked for some time, but after a while his eyes dropped. He couldn't dare look these victims in the eye, products of a mistake he made, but he resolved, as he had resolved before and will resolve again before all this was over, to put right this horrific imbalance.

"Actually…about the Earth King…" Sokka quietly intruded into Colonel Yuung's spiel, "he was secretly overthrown by his royal guard, the Dai Li! That's why the Earth Kingdom made peace, because the Dai Li's committed itself to Fire Princess Azula! We managed to get the King to safety at the Northern Air Temple…"

Yuung scoffed and looked over Sokka with an incredulous eye, "so he's either a collaborator or a wimp overthrown by _other _collaborators? Is _he _practicing 'neutral jing' as well or is he really as pathetic as he sounds?"

"Hey, don't talk about Kuei that way! He's a nice guy!" Katara turned back to Yuung with her hands on hips, "admittedly maybe a little _too _nice, but if the Earth Kingdom is to rise again, we'll need his help!"

"What goes on behind the Walls doesn't interest me in the _slightest_, young woman," Yuung remarked disparagingly, turning forwards and walking briskly again down another narrow row of huts, "what does interest me is helping these people get their land back. If the generals aren't able to do it, then that leaves us."

The Colonel had led them to a large building with lights streaming out from the windows embedded in it. Yuung knocked on the wooden door, and a small gap in-between the planks through which previously streamed light abruptly filled with a blood-shot eyeball, speaking in a low, extremely tired voice, "how high does the earth rise?"

"The earth rises to the crown of our skulls," Yuung repeated mechanically, and the eyeball disappeared to the tune of clicks and clacks before the door finally opened, revealing a warm, orange interior with the door held open by a man dressed from head to foot in brown rags and scruffy bandages, having difficulty standing up. Yuung led the group inside the building, which they couldn't help but notice was a lot smaller on the inside. The discrepancy was quickly explained by the sick man pulling aside a tattered tapestry to reveal a large hole in the wall, leading downwards. Yuung walked inside without hesitation, but Aang briefly paused to look into the sick man's eyes, expecting some form of recrimination for his clothing. Mysteriously, however, the man didn't seem to pay 'Kazuki' much heed, and indeed it suddenly struck him that he had wandered through a refugee camp with every reason to string him up from the nearest wall, and yet he had passed unmolested and unnoticed, despite the reception from the old man and the young boy they'd met earlier. Whatever the reason, he had no choice but to follow Sokka downward into yet another of the labyrinthine tunnels that ran through the camp like coal seams.

The tunnel led into another, larger, connecting tunnel, dimly lit by small torches and considerably more populated. Here, men and boys of all ages ran to and fro in constant activity, sometimes carrying equipment or buckets of various substances. Although some of them seemed to have been professional soldiers, many more were quite noticeably civilians drafted into military work. No one except Yuung wore any kind of uniform, and they didn't pay much attention to the newcomers except to nod their respect for the Colonel, being intently busy on whatever matter they had set themselves on. There were boys as young as ten and old men who still considered themselves in the prime of their health, and sometimes people with bandages and lost limbs hobbling determinedly from one tunnel to the next. The professionals were noticeable because they were the only ones who didn't move in much of a hurry.

"How long has this been going on?" Katara asked, amazed at the organisation of the tunnels they were walking down.

"These tunnels were first built by smugglers supplying food and weapons to the refugees, they've been around for years," Yuung explained, facing forward, "but when my men found them, we decided to put them towards more…practical uses. We've established a wider network, and now with the new 'peace' we've been given an opportunity to put this network to good use."

"I see…now that the Earth Kingdom's made peace with the Fire Nation, the border's no longer guarded," Sokka surmised.

"Precisely," Yuung continued, "two weeks ago you couldn't _move _for all the troops positioned just across the river. But now their forces have withdrawn towards the north we can slink through whenever we wish. Ironically, it's opened up the possibility of finally getting these refugees' land back."

"You're planning to drive out the Fire Nation from the north-west?" Toph wondered, since it sounded a bit of a tall order for the straggle of irregulars they'd ran into thus far.

"From the inside out, yes," Yuung spoke cryptically, not used to having to explain his actions.

The group walked past a wide alcove, but didn't enter it. Though they all gave the dark tunnel a cursory glance, none of them noticed the small kid who peered out the corner of the alcove, holding onto a short pike, eyes peeking out from under a stolen copper helmet. His eyes widened at the sight of the Avatar's companions, and he gazed in shock at their passing by.

"Pipsqueak!" the helmeted boy whispered loudly, "Pipsqueak! Look at who just arrived!"

"What is it, Duke?" a low, guttural voice emerged from an adjoining tunnel, inside which a colossal giant of a man filled the space between the rocks, holding a sack of supplies effortlessly on his shoulder. He peered round the corner from behind the tiny, pensive Duke and snarled, "you gotta be kidding me."

"It's those _jerks_," the Duke cringed angrily at them, "if it wasn't for them, the Freedom Fighters wouldn't have broken up!"

"Glad the Airbender's dead," Pipsqueak rumbled, "now we can get back to what we should've been doing all along."

"Yeah…" the Duke agreed with a mischievous smile, before his attention snapped to the red-clothed kid treading carefully behind the Avatar's group, "wait…is he one of ours?"

"I don't know…I never saw him before," Pipsqueak briefly wondered, before leaning up with his sack of foodstuffs and starting to walk back down the tunnel they'd emerged from, "c'mon, Duke, you know how mad Thaksin gets when we're late with his supplies."

"…sure…" the Duke confirmed, still looking at the strange, short-haired boy. As the red-clothed kid turned a corner to disappear, the Duke saw something that would haunt him for the rest of the night in curiosity. The boy he saw, absent-mindedly, lifted up the back of his shirt to rub an enormous scar that ran down the length of his spine and burst outwards like a star. The Duke was still staring out at it in amazement when a massive hand emerged out of the tunnel behind him to grab his shoulder and pull him back towards his prescribed duties.

The two boys carried on with their tasks, as did everyone else in the hive of tunnels, dedicated towards the task of purging the Earth Kingdom of Firebenders forever.

**To Be Continued…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06


	3. Machinations

General Fong had taken to staying up nights in his chamber. He didn't have much work to do these days, so much of the time he remained at his desk was spent contemplating things. He hadn't been a reader of much that was literary before, since as a soldier he couldn't find that sort of thing very useful, but now with voluminous amounts of free time on his hands he was increasingly trying to find his poetic side. It was proving illusive, as he threw another piece of self-absorbed drivel at the wall in frustration. The General heaved a sigh and slunk back into his chair, deep in thought.

After the debacle early last spring, General Fong had seen the people under his command shrink to little more than a skeleton force. He had been able to hang onto this area of the Earth Kingdom by his finger-nails, but the fall of Omashu to the south definitely didn't help matters. Despite deep misgivings about his reliability, Fong had remained as commander of the local militia firstly because there wasn't anyone else remotely capable of replacing him and secondly because the Council of Five wasn't sure if they _could _replace him even if they wanted to. The Walls were a long way from here, and Generals all over had gotten used to treating their commands as unofficial fiefdoms. The _official _fiefdoms weren't much better, consisting of ad hoc arrangements that resulted in large swathes of the Kingdom staying out of the war completely until they were directly threatened. Fong had frequently taken heart from the fact that out of all the feudal authorities at least _he _was doing something pro-active about the war effort.

Now in the space of a fortnight much of that had been turned upside-down. Not only due to the end of the war but due to the massive surge of influence from the central authority in Ba Sing Se. All of a sudden everyone was compelled to stand back in line, to get into shape, and submit themselves to the Earth King. The dim and distant figure who supposedly held the Mandate of the Earth had overnight taken over nearly all the reins of power. This made Fong worried. His position had been rendered redundant, and his past record didn't exactly chime with a figure they could trust not to do anything rash. He was _proud _of that reputation, but now it threatened to bite him in the back-side.

Such was the nature of his thoughts when a stone-faced, determined man in a general's uniform strode confidently into the chamber and stopped short of the desk, illuminated by dull torch-light and flanked by a small number of soldiers. Fong could tell where this was headed, "do I get the chance to pack my possessions first?"

"No need, you're staying right where you are for now," General Gin Hong addressed his colleague, "I have to say I'm impressed with your men's loyalty. It took me twenty minutes to persuade the guards to get out of the way."

"They don't take kindly to installed sycophants from the other side of the Earth Kingdom," Fong stared down the new General, who briefly matched the stare before breaking out into a small smile.

"I see. So you think I'm some kind of officer, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, personal friends with the Lord of Some-Such who bought his way into a commission?" Gin Hong countered, "I must have neglected to tell you that I was only a Major yesterday. But that's not the point, is it? The point is you want your soldiers to think of yourself as 'one of us'. Someone who clawed his way to the top out of sheer talent."

"Whether a soldier or a noble, a sycophant's a sycophant," Fong argued. Gin Hong's smile disappeared and he wandered closer to the itinerant General.

"Whatever your _opinion_, the fact remains that more people are loyal to me than to you," Gin Hong leaned over the stone desk, "and your position hasn't been helped by your lack of activity over the last two weeks. Peace has been declared, barriers are coming down, and yet some subjects of the Earth Kingdom are continuing to stage attacks against the Firebenders. From your territory, as it happens."

"I might be able to do something about it if I had something resembling proper resources," Fong complained, "I have few soldiers and practically no support from central government. Everything was pulled out of this area as soon as peace was declared…"

"You'll be pleased to find the Twelth Army camped right outside," Gin Hong claimed, beginning to walk slow circles around the desk, "but keeping track of suspects? Discovering centres of resistance? Choking off supplies? You've been more than capable of such things and yet you haven't lifted a finger. Not a single arrest has been made."

Fong made an attempt to look the other General in the eye, but inevitably failed, looking down upon the desk, "I cannot countenance hunting down and destroying fellow Earthbenders."

Gin Hong paused in his circling around the table, looking sympathetically at Fong before turning his back on his colleague and walking towards the back window, looking out at the darkened, torch-lit base, "the Avatar did a real number on this base last time he was here, didn't he?"

"I was _attempting _to have some co-operation out of him," Fong stared angrily at the turned figure of Gin Hong, "but I guess the Avatar State really wasn't everything it was cracked up to be…"

"That said, you showed great dedication to sacrifice your base for the sake of the Earth Kingdom," Gin Hong contemplated, "if I were in your shoes, I probably would have done much the same thing."

"What are you getting at?" Fong wondered, "the Avatar is dead, and by all accounts he's better off _being _dead. The whole incident was futile from start to finish."

"Better to try than to dismiss. My former commander was an aged sort, acted like he'd seen the world, one of his favourite phrases was 'I've been fighting longer than you've been alive'. But he was dismissive, condescending and unwilling to take the risk of failure," Gin Hong turned back to the desk, "there's a reason people like you and me are looked down upon. _They _stay in authority for decades and confuse it for military experience, but people like _us_, we grew up with swords in our hands. They say they've fought for decades, but we are _defined _by fighting. We know how it works, what its nature is, and most importantly we know how to _do what is necessary_."

"So it's necessary to turn against our own people?" Fong questioned, receiving a stare-down from Gin Hong.

"As soon as they commit acts that threaten the security of the Earth Kingdom, they cease to have any right to be called 'our people'," Gin Hong answered, "you've seen first-hand what this war has wrought, as have I. Your actions were committed out of a principled attempt to end it the quickest way you knew how. Now the war really _is _over, and I can't let a rabble of malcontents threaten everything we've achieved in the last few weeks."

Fong considered Gin Hong's statements carefully. It wasn't long ago when the infirmaries were overloaded with fresh wounded, and if anything that trend had accelerated in the months following his attempt to tap the Avatar State. Now the infirmaries had emptied of everything except random accidents and common colds. They had no reason to fear death anymore. That alone was worth keeping.

"What do you ask of me?" Fong enquired, resting back in his chair.

"All I'm asking for is your co-operation," Gin Hong looked up at the dark figure that had emerged from his escort of soldiers, "the envoy from the Earth King will be the one asking the questions."

"The Earth King gives you his warmest greetings, General Fong," the Dai Li agent approached Fong's desk out of the shadows between the gaps of the torch-light, "many of the refugees from Omashu fled to this area. We need to know _exactly _where they ended up."

* * *

The tunnels led away in more directions than the group had the patience to count, and were eventually relieved to find that the Colonel had come to a halt next to a particularly large hole in the wall, through which there lay a number of alcoves either side of a lengthy corridor, looking a lot like some kind of barracks. Yuung turned to face the group.

"These are the sleeping quarters for those of us who would have…some difficulty staying above ground," Yuung explained the nature of the barracks, "you can rest up and tomorrow we can try to find some kind of use for you."

"Oh!" Sokka interjected, raising his arms in a conciliatory gesture, "we can't…really…stay for long. We're on a journey elsewhere, but we can help each other any way we can…I hope…"

Sokka's voice drained away into Yuung's dangerous, determined stare into his eyes. The Colonel didn't especially like potential recruits scurrying out of their assigned duties, "okay, where are you going and for what purpose?"

"Oh! Errr…" Sokka rubbed the back of his head nervously, to Katara's amusement since he was essentially trying to find a way to explain why they're going to the Fire Nation without mentioning that it's for the purpose of Aang's training. Now, at this point, Aang's identity was going to have to be revealed. In Sokka's clingy need for a credible explanation, however, his eyes rested on a group of people that emerged out of a tunnel behind Yuung…dressed in red clothes and sporting top knots of various sizes. Latching onto any opportunity to change the subject, Sokka asked, "hey! What are those guys doing here!?"

Yuung, raising an eyebrow at Sokka's evasion, nevertheless turned to see the Fire Nation-looking people walking away down the tunnel behind him. His answer was meticulously matter-of-fact, "those are a few of my spies. We have people wear Fire Nation clothing in order to infiltrate the colonies. If you're wondering why Kazuki here hasn't been strung up and mercilessly beaten, that's why."

"How do you tell the spies from real Fire Nation people?" Katara asked, naturally.

"That would be down to Yama, the boy you met out front," Yuung turned back to the group, looking a little more whimsical than usual, "it's uncanny. It's like he can smell the real ones from the fake ones."

That sounded a little worrisome to Aang, in that apparently he smelt like a Firebender, but whatever the worry he couldn't help but field a question, "what do you plan to do with these spies?"

"What else? We extract information from the hostages we captured, and use that information to better integrate ourselves into the occupied territories. Once we learn their weaknesses, we can strike more effectively," Yuung explained his overall strategy, "soon enough we'll have an entire network set up."

The cogs turned in Sokka's mind. They needed to get to the Fire Nation, but the only way they could get in was on a Fire Navy ship. To get onto a Fire Navy ship, you needed to be Fire Nation. This Colonel was establishing a network of spies wearing Fire Nation clothing. He had the facilities to turn otherwise simple Earth Kingdom folk into Fire Nation civilians. But he needed inside information, which he was extracting from captured hostages. The plan came together so beautifully it overtook Sokka in excitement, thumping his hand into his palm ecstatically and shouting at the top of his lungs, "_that's it!_"

"…that's what?" Yuung questioned, critically analysing Sokka's outburst where everyone else was just taken by surprise. Still pleased with himself, Sokka coughed as he collected himself.

"I think I've figured out how we can help each other," Sokka smiled in assurance, "you're setting up a spy network, but so far it only stretches into the colonies. Now think of how effective it would be if it stretched into the _Fire Nation itself_?"

"That's the long-term plan, but it's going to be months before we're ready for that kind of infiltration," Yuung examined.

"You don't have that amount of time," Sokka revealed, "a comet will arrive at the end of the summer that will increase Firebending strength a hundred-fold, which they will use to end the war. But next month there will be a solar eclipse, during which the Firebenders will lose their powers. If you have a team in place inside the Fire Nation when that happens, it could cause all kinds of havoc!"

Yuung put a hand to his chin and contemplated Sokka's plan, "hmmm…I believe your strategy has some merit…" Sokka smiled in glee before Yuung delivered the second part of his prognosis, "but I don't see how you people could be uniquely qualified to carry it out."

Sokka's smile never wavered. He had anticipated this all along, and flung his hands in Aang's direction to emphasize their trump-card, "Kazuki! He grew up in the Fire Nation! He knows the place like the back of his hand!"

"Yeah!" Aang chipped in with Sokka's performance, muttering under his breath, "…sorta."

"If we sneak on-board a Fire Navy ship, we can head to the Fire Nation and use Kazuki's knowledge where it would do the most good," Sokka crossed his arms triumphantly.

"Very well," Yuung considered carefully, "but how do you know you can trust this boy? And, for that matter, _why _has he come over to our side in the first place?"

"Oh!" Sokka's arms fell away as he realised a slight flaw in his plan…he never entirely figured out 'Kazuki's' back-story. He was going to have to blag, "he's…well…it's a really _sad _tale, Colonel Yuung…"

"Spare me my sensitivities," the Colonel took the opportunity to cross _his _arms, "now spit it out."

"Uh…well…Aa-…Kazuki comes from this village…on a really small island callllllllled…" Sokka looked to Aang desperately, trying to drum up support for his version of events. Aang decided to help out the Water Tribe warrior with what little knowledge of the Fire Nation he had, but felt like a pawn somewhat.

"Ainu," Aang picked the first island name that came into his head. It was a nice place, lots of beaches, though they had a problem in that it was dotted with exhausted quarries.

"Ainu!" Sokka grabbed onto the name and continued his role, "and…one day the Army came because they were looking for something…"

"Someone," Aang added. There wasn't anything left on Ainu to find, if memory served.

"Someone!" Sokka corrected himself, "and they wanted to track him down because…"

"He was a fugitive," Aang was starting to fill in Sokka's blanks, and Toph was once again starting to find it hard to tell if he was fibbing, "the authorities thought he'd committed a crime and the Fire Nation wanted him more than anything."

"Right!" Sokka was pleased at the help, "but they couldn't find him so they got kinda angry and…you know…started burning things…"

"And then they killed everyone," Aang contributed, his eyes turned downwards.

"Yes! And then they killed every…huh…hwah?" Sokka paused in his tracks and looked over at an increasingly melancholy Aang.

"The soldiers were angry they couldn't find the one they were looking for, so they rounded up the entire village and killed them, men, women and children," Aang continued monosyllabically, "I was the only survivor."

"How did you get away?" Yuung asked, just short of believing his entire story.

Aang paused before giving his answer, feeling like he was reliving events a century before, "I ran away before it happened. I only found out about it afterwards."

The solemn-ness of Aang's voice struck Toph more than the rest of them, simply because she knew from his heartbeat that he was being completely, open-heartedly honest. It put into sharp relief her own act of running away from her troubles. She'd never seen it in that light before, and didn't feel comfortable considering it like that. At the very least it was convincing enough for Yuung, who felt slightly ashamed at doubting the boy, and haltingly and embarrassingly placed a hand on the red-clothed kid's shoulder, saying without much conviction, 'okay, I'm…sorry…"

It didn't sound like much of an apology, but Sokka felt like apologising himself for putting Aang through all his memories again. But at least it did the job, and he continued the act long enough to make sure they were getting to the Fire Nation, "so…do we get the job?"

Yuung looked over at Sokka and hurriedly snapped his hand away from Aang's shoulder, coughing to cover his mild embarrassment, "you'd better get some rest tonight. First thing tomorrow you'll have to drop by the espionage centre to get yourselves kitted out in Fire Nation gear. Until then, should you have some strange desire to get some fresh air, you can get to the camp by that ladder over there."

The Colonel pointed past the group towards a ladder affixed to the wall, above which was a hole continuing upwards, presumably to some house above. What attracted much of their interest, however, was a large tunnel at the end of the adjoining corridor that, in contrast to all the tunnels they'd been through thus far, didn't have a single torch in it. Yuung continued, "be careful though, we change the position of those entrances on a daily basis. And should you be caught up there you'd better make damn sure you croak it before they get any information out of you. You can trust the refugees, but don't take any chances when soldiers come along."

"What's down that way?" Toph pointed towards the dark tunnel, as even though she couldn't tell it was unlit, she could tell it was dramatically different in structure to the rest of the tunnels.

"That's one of the escape tunnels. There's one for each of the six hubs we operate down here. Should we ever be discovered, those will take us to different points in the surrounding countryside, from which we can regroup and re-establish ourselves elsewhere in the region," Yuung elaborated, before turning away from the group and disappearing back the way they had come, "if you get lost, just ask! But I've got a resistance to organise so if you got any problems I'd recommend keeping your traps shut!" His voice echoed down the tunnel as he vanished from view.

"What a nice guy," Sokka remarked sarcastically once Yuung was out of earshot. He led the way into the corridor while the others followed behind. Katara was the only one who stayed still, even though only momentarily. She was visibly shaking, with two clenched fists, as Aang's recollections had prompted another unwelcome memory in her, one of several that were being inflicted upon her ever since she came into this place. She was thinking about 'Kazuki's' imaginary village and the village of her own childhood, peering out from her tiny hiding place as her mother was killed in front of her eight-year-old eyes.

* * *

The 'sleeping quarters' were named very literally. There were four beds for every hole. Calling them 'bedrooms' would've been excessively luxurious. Toph was rather disappointed at the dimensions when she came across one that was empty, near the end of the corridor.

"There aren't any others, are there?" Toph asked rhetorically, holding up her arm to let a drowsy Momo crawl over the edge of one of the top bunk-beds and curl up into sleep. Toph sighed, "so long, personal space."

"Cheer up, Toph!" Sokka pronounced, placing his sleeping bag near the opposite bunk-bed, "this time tomorrow we'll be on a nice, air-conditioned boat heading to the Fire Nat- okay, maybe that isn't too good for cheering up, but it's got to be better than _this _place."

"Whether it's better or not, we have to get to the Fire Nation as soon as possible," Aang confided as he wandered in behind Sokka, kicked off his sandals and climbed up the nearest ladder to the top bunk Momo was sleeping in.

"Yeah, I guess it's worth changing one piece of cloth for another piece of cloth," Toph commented as she lay on her back in the bunk below Aang's, "honestly, I can't fathom how you people tell the difference."

"Think of it as…'invisibility ink'," Sokka explained, sitting on the edge of the lower bunk-bed opposite Toph's and still a little excited that his plan worked so well, "we'll be able to glide in and find that 'friend' of yours without raising the slightest suspicion."

Aang's legs dangled over the side of the top bunk-bed as he listened in. Toph, meanwhile, turned her head in Sokka's approximate direction, "do you have to call Iroh a 'friend' like it was a dirty word?"

"Everything's a dirty word when the Fire Nation's involv-" Sokka glibbed before being interrupted by the loud drop of a backpack onto the hard stone floor. Aang and Sokka both looked up to see Katara with an outstretched arm glaring at Sokka evilly. Toph leant up to put her feet on the ground, and could tell immediately that she was really, really mad.

"I…have had…_enough_," Katara spoke with quiet menace, forcing her arm to her side, "Sokka, please explain to me, _right now_, why we're _making up stories_ to convince Colonel Yuung that Aang isn't the Avatar?"

"I told you!" Sokka exclaimed, "we have to keep it a secret in case the Fire Nation find out!"

"These people are at the _pits of despair _and you're worried they're gonna go off and tell the _Fire Nation_!?" Katara crossed her arms angrily, "if anyone needs to know the Avatar is alive, it's these refugees. They can't go on like this!"

"And they won't! As soon as Aang finds a Firebending teacher!" Sokka gesticulated towards Aang, "I just don't want to cause…you know…too many distractions! I mean, these people must be _really busy _'n all…"

"You don't trust him," Toph finally cottoned on to what Sokka had been feeling around Colonel Yuung, and 'looked' into his palpating heart analytically, "you don't trust the Colonel."

"Sokka doesn't trust _anyone_," Aang pointed out an obvious truth, to which Sokka acted defensively.

"Considering everything that's happened to us in the last couple of months, I fail to see how that is _any kind of character flaw_," Sokka reacted, turning back to Katara, "and I don't see why we should trust him! He takes hostages, he drafts children, the sick and the elderly into serving him, he uses the poor and vulnerable as a support base, and he's full of talk of 'driving out the Fire Nation from the _inside out_'. I don't know about you, but I'm getting a distinct sense of déjà vu."

"This isn't Jet and his merry band of murderous thugs," Katara's voice briefly broke, but she kept up her dignity in anger, "these are _professional soldiers_! They should know what they're doing!"

"Sure they know what they're doing," Sokka crossed his own arms and glared back at Katara, "but I thought by now you would've learnt that just because someone wears a fancy uniform doesn't make everything magically all-right."

Katara was fuming, but couldn't see anything that would have made her pig-headed idiot of a brother change his mind. Aang the peacemaker decided to intervene between the quarrelling siblings, "look, I know the Colonel's methods sound a little…questionable, but I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt for now. He can be of help to us, and in any case whatever the argument is, we'll be better able to discuss it in the morning when we're not feeling stressed and tired from walking constantly for six hours straight. I'm exhausted, you're all exhausted, so let's continue this when we're _less _exhausted, shall we?"

Toph picked her feet up and deposited them at the bottom of the thin-blanketed stone bed, head resting on her arms, "can't argue with _that_."

Katara continued glaring at Sokka, while clambering up the side of the bunk-bed and resting at the top. Sokka, glaring back, waited until she was out of sight before lying flat on his back, still thinking loudly. Aang kept dangling over the side until everyone was in their beds. Katara, still annoyed, was facing the wall. It was this sight that led him to lean back, letting his feet get warm via Momo's sleeping body. Despite the promise of sanctuary, this day had been unduly stressful, and Aang was coming face-to-face with the kinds of problems he should have been solving as the Avatar. Despite the pain and suffering all around him, even in those close to him, he couldn't do a single thing to help. He was once again drifting away from his friends, unable to reconcile them.

At the edges of his vision, a form of darkness began to overtake him, like he was falling into something. He recognised the feeling, and realised that it wasn't sleep. He still had too many things to do, and tomorrow would be busy beyond belief, so he couldn't think of disappearing just yet. He pushed the darkness away, and breathed steadily, letting the normal, unthreatening darkness of sleep overtake him. Toph, in the bunk-bed below, was facing the stone structure above and questioning herself on why it felt momentarily like Aang was disappearing from the top bunk.

**To Be Continued…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06


	4. Shedding The Past

There was no light to signify morning deep in the tunnels, but the military had its own way around that problem. At 6AM on the dot a huge gong was bashed repeatedly, reverberating down the tunnels, into the sleeping quarters and deep into Sokka's exhausted skull, which he gripped in intense aural agony. The bashing of the gong went on for a full minute, and any chances of getting any decent shut-eye were scuppered when the inhabitants of the quarters jumped out of their bunks and began rushing around outside to fulfil their early morning tasks. Sokka leaned up and hit his head on the bunk above, staring out bleary-eyed at the hole that represented their living space, back-aching and mouth feeling like a colony of bees had nested in it.

"Why did I ever become a warrior?" Sokka mumbled, rubbing his head nauseously. Toph, leaning up off of her bunk, found herself amused at Sokka's pain.

"Marvellous opportunities for travel, meeting lots of interesting people and bludgeoning them?" Toph offered. She noticed Aang was already wide awake, climbing down the bunk behind her, while Momo was perched on the corner of the bunk trying to clear out his ears with his fingers.

"Oh yeah…" Sokka rubbed his eyes and his back simultaneously, feeling that he might just get better if he walked around a little while. Still not entirely conscious, he bumped his head on the top bunk again, and this time it was Katara's turn to giggle, as she was rising from her own slumber.

The group got themselves ready as the tunnels were coming to life.

* * *

The dressing room-cum-'espionage centre' held various red clothes of various shapes and sizes for both sexes, and it was rather straightforward finding clothes for the three of them. Toph wore a short, pink, open-neck dress tied with a red ribbon around the waist with a pair of red trousers underneath. Whatever the case, she wouldn't countenance anything covering her toes. Sokka wore a red, light-weight tunic with a collar, along with grey trousers and boots, which proved surprisingly comfortable. Katara wore something similar to her former clothes, except coloured red instead of blue, and made out of markedly lighter material.

What provided more difficulty was hair. While Sokka's ponytail lent itself to a top-knot, there was nevertheless a problem with the shaved portions of his head. Although he had neglected to pay them much attention, what with being on the run and everything, it was still much shorter than was the Fire Nation norm. The elderly woman who assisted them provided the helpful suggestion that should he be stopped in the street and asked about his hairstyle, he simply replied 'lice'. Toph was more straight-forward, due to her abundant mass of hair, which was easily styled into a top-knot with pig-tails curling around her neck and her characteristic bangs spread apart to either side of her face. Though they tended to gravitate back across her eyes anyway. Katara, for reasons the elderly woman could only guess at, requested that she be allowed to style herself, and retreated into a closed off corner of the dressing room with one of the only mirrors they had in the camp.

Sokka walked up and down, testing his boots out. They fit his feet better than his old boots did. And despite how _clean _the clothes were he couldn't help but feel a little _dirty _wearing red. He took a good look at the stitching and the smoothness of the fabric, stood up straight and delivered his verdict, "I don't want to say this…but…I'll be damned if Firebenders don't make some stylish stuff."

Toph rolled her blind eyes, "sure it's a lot better _ventilated_, but that's the only difference I can tell. And this stuff _feels _like it was mass-produced in a factory."

"But it feels so _smooth _and _light_," Sokka's comments were tinged by unquenchable admiration, "and it makes me look like a million gold pieces! Why can't they have this stuff in blue? It's _fantastic_."

"You are way too easily impressed," Toph sat on the ground and spent a while ruffling up her bangs into a style she preferred, "and I think I'm more qualified to tell what is or isn't stylish than you, peasant-boy."

"I apologise, _your highness_," Sokka responded bitterly, prompting a miniature rock-slide beneath his feet that left him in some difficulty keeping upright.

Katara, sitting down with the small, rough-edged mirror wedged into an indent in the wall, put the finishing touches on her hair. She was using a parchment illustration as reference, wedged next to the mirror, and stared at both it and herself grimly. Her long frizzy hair had been tamed and cut until the top-knot finally crowned it. Two bangs lay either side of her face, and her hair ran down the back of her neck without pigtails. The only thing left was to take her mother's necklace off of her neck.

She did it slowly and reluctantly, staring into the mirror at a woman she couldn't recognise. She was looking at a woman who came from a place far away from the village of her childhood, where people wore red clothes and served in wars to conquer the globe. Where one day a small band of conquerors had set forth and travelled south to her village, and took a girl's mother away from her. And this woman Katara was staring at might have been related to them, or maybe was even along for the trip, seeing the sights of the world and crushing them underfoot, along with anyone who stood in her way.

Katara realised how immature her tears were, and did what she could to choke them back. She knew it was necessary, their disguises, but it didn't make staring into the face of her mother's killer any easier, and knowing that face belonged to her compelled her to wipe her eyes of the salty water. Seeing this _thing _cry along with her made her angry, as if she could know what this Water Tribe girl felt! She looked down at the necklace, and promised more than anything to keep it close to her. To act as an anchor for her heritage and her blood, to keep her from being lost in seas of fire. She closed her eyes as she took the mirror back down. Katara didn't want to look at that face again.

She could never trust a Fire Nation face…not after what happened with _him_.

* * *

While the others were getting changed, Aang had climbed up the ladder near their quarters and poked through a futon covering the trap-door to wait in a small hut on the surface, looking out over the heaving mass of people in the refugee camp as they began their daily business of keeping themselves alive. Aang was resting his arms on the window-sill looking out contemplatively. Yama was in the hut along with a small number of refugees curled up in blankets distractedly eating their bowls of rice, and was leaning against the wall of the hut looking at Aang's back in a state of apology.

"Uh…Kazuki…the Colonel told me about your story…" Yama revealed, not entirely used to apologising to Fire Nation citizens, "um…sorry about how I treated you earlier. 'course I…didn't know then…"

"It's okay," Aang said, still facing out towards the morning sun-lit day emerging outside.

"I mean…yeah…I'm sorry about what happened to your village," Yama attempted small-talk, "I knew the Fire Nation were scum but I never thought they'd do that kind of thing to their own people…"

"Yeah, we're a scummy kind of race," Aang muttered in distraction.

"Oh! I didn't mean that…you were…I'm saying this all wrong…" Yama rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment, "what I mean is…I guess that makes you one of us. Half the people here probably have much the same story."

"They probably do," Aang mumbled, looking down at the street below and seeing a small group of four kids in the middle of the sun-baked street, squatting around a circle where a boy and a girl were holding two wooden dolls opposite each other. They were broadly indistinguishable except for one being slightly bulkier than the other. A third doll was lying unused next to them, since they were obviously down to one-on-one matches, to which Aang couldn't help but smile.

"Colonel Yuung raises his mighty war-hammer!" the boy with the bulkier doll rose it a little distance in the air, engrossed in the fantasy.

"Yuung doesn't have a war-hammer…" another of the boys pointed out sceptically.

"Well he does now!" the doll-wielding boy snapped back angrily, before rising the Yuung-doll higher and bringing it down before the girl's skinnier doll, "he rises it up and charges it with his mighty earth powers before _crashing _it down on the Blue Spirit."

"Swish!" the girl exclaimed excitedly, pulling the skinnier Blue Spirit-doll to one side as the Yuung-doll was brought down, waving it rapidly from side to side, "the Blue Spirit dodges the war-hammer and _slice, slice, slices _Colonel Yuung to little bits before he even notices."

"Oh come on!" the boy argued at the girl, "no one can dodge that quickly, and even if he did he couldn't slice him up _before he notices_, that's way too slow."

"Well the Blue Spirit is quicker than the night and his swords can cut the air in two," the girl countered in her world of make-believe, "beat that!"

"Okay! Yuung can punch the ground and make everything for _li _in every direction turn into powder!" the boy thwacked the Yuung doll into the ground to emphasise it, "so nyah!"

"'Nyah, nyah, my big, beefy Yuung can punch big holes in the ground'," the girl counter-played, "the Blue Spirit is swift and dark and goes _swish swish_, so that's not gonna work! Yuung's just gonna make a big, stupid hole."

"The Blue Spirit's a pansy!" the boy flinged his doll repeatedly at the skinnier doll, "with all that dodging and swishing, he'd never take Colonel Yuung in a fair fight!"

"You wanna bet?" the girl pushed the Blue Spirit doll into the Yuung doll.

"Yeah!" the boy pushed back with the Yuung doll and tried to overpower the girl's hand.

"Stop!" a third doll appeared between them and two fingers held its arms out so that it looked like it was separating the two dolls, "I am the Avatar and I say you should make peace and be friends!"

"…but that's _boring_," a girl who was watching the two kids duke it out looked over to Aang, who was holding the doll with a big smile on his face.

"Okay then…if you don't make peace then I'll make a _huge whirlwind _that'll _kill you all_!" Aang waved the doll around as if it were talking, and then vibrated it while making 'whup whup whup' noises as if it were charging up.

"_Schwing_!" the girl holding the Blue Spirit doll quickly brought it up and hit the Avatar doll before retreating back, "got him while he was charging."

"Huh…" Aang let the doll he was holding cease vibrating and let it drop to the ground, "…so you did…"

"Boom!" the boy charged the Blue Spirit doll with his Yuung doll and sent it to the ground as the girl let it go in surprise, "I got _you _while you were distracted!"

"Oh no fair!" the girl protested. Aang looked at the fallen Avatar doll and appreciated the irony of the kid's game. Azula's strategy was so obvious that even a kid could figure it out. No wonder he had the hole in his back.

"Psst! Hey! Brat!" Aang looked up from his crouched position to see Yama leaning out of the window, looking fretful, "you want to blow our cover? Get inside! There are guards coming!"

Aang, without time to think, scurried up from his seated position and through the wooden door into the dark, humid gloom of the hut. Yama locked the door behind Aang as the red-clothed boy peered out of the window at the approaching soldiers. There were eight of the strong, well-built men, all in official uniform, around whom there was a consistent wide circle as the refugees moved to avoid them.

"They look different to the last lot," Yama commented, looking out over Aang's shoulder, noticing after a while that their eyes were fixed on their own door as they approached closer, "they're coming this way! Quick, bury yourself in these!"

Aang turned to Yama just in time to have a pile of brown rags thrown at him. They looked like the blankets everyone else in the hut had wrapped around themselves. He didn't have much time to put them on before there was a loud knock on the door.

"In the name of the Earth King, you have five seconds to open this door!" the lead soldier shouted into the hut, while the other soldiers positioned themselves outside. With no answer forthcoming, the leader came over with some annoyance, "fine, be difficult!"

The door was violently kicked open and Major Mugong strode into the hut. His shadow passed over Aang's eyes as the small boy hid amongst the piles of rags, having crawled up against the wall. The hut wasn't big enough for all of them, so only four of the soldiers came inside, the rest setting up a perimeter outside the hut. Yama was acting at sleeping on the futon, while the Major approached the youngster, cutting a shadow over the guard to the resistance entrance. Yama opened his eyes and blinked at the Major, saying snarkily, "can I help you, officer?"

"Get up, for crying out loud," the Major picked the boy up by the arm and pushed him aside, nearly leading Yama to trip over the other residents of the hut. The young man looked visibly worried as the soldier leaned down to pull the futon aside. Underneath the obstruction, the Earth Army Major discovered…bare floor. Yama sighed in relief while Major Mugong flapped the futon back against the ground in irritation, ordering "search the hut."

"There's nowhere else to search, sir," another soldier stated the obvious, "whatever hiding place Yuung is using could be in another hut close by."

"But the tip-off said it'd be here," the Major pointed to the ground in emphasis, "_here _specifically. And unless we find the entrance intact we can't do anything. Tearing this place apart is going to cause more problems than it solves."

The Major promptly looked back out the door again at the small straggle of kids looking inside. His face seemed to warm, and the softer approach appeared to occur to the Earth Soldier. He signalled his men to follow him out, leaving the door ungraciously broken. As soon as they left Aang, still wrapped in blankets, leant up to look out the window at the Major, who was walking up to the small girl holding the Blue Spirit doll.

"Hi there, little champ," the Major leaned down to talk to the girl at eye level, "how old are you?"

"Nine and three quarters," the girl reported coolly. She didn't take kindly to the intrusive soldier at all.

"My, my…" the Major appealed, taking a small parchment out of his pocket, "you know, I've got a daughter. Not nearly as big and grown-up as nine and three quarters, but almost, _almost _as sweet as you are. All the way on the other side of the Earth Kingdom."

"That's nice," the girl said mechanically, clutching her doll to her chest and looking suspiciously at the smiling soldier.

"Well, we all have someone we want to look after, and I'm no different than you like that, but some people, some bad, nasty people, don't want to look after others, and would much rather _hurt _others," the Major unrolled the parchment to reveal an illustration of Colonel Yuung, "now this man, this is one of those bad, nasty people. So if you know anything about him, you would tell us, wouldn't you?"

The girl looked at the drawing, and back at the warm-faced soldier, clutching the doll the entire time. After a pause of many seconds the girl, fixed in gaze upon the Major's eyes, chucked her doll straight at his face. The Major flinched at the impact, and his face dropped as the small child's cold face revealed her answer to his question.

"I see," Major Mugong understood, leaning back up and turning towards the soldiers, "we're not going to get anywhere. Let's report back to the General."

The soldiers fell into formation and followed the Major back down the street. The murmur that had previously been suppressed by the soldier's presence re-emerged, and Aang fell back down in some relief against the wall. They liked to look after their own here, where the rice having any kind of vegetables with it was considered a delicacy, the kids held a stronger sense of pride than their parents, and where boys wouldn't answer people calling for them no matter how many times their name was called out.

"Your friends are calling you," Yama informed Aang, who was still hiding in the blankets. Emerging out of them to look out the window, he saw a strange boy clothed in a red tunic call out from inside a hut across the road from them.

"Kazuki!" Sokka called out, "get your butt back in here! We got places to go!"

Aang abruptly remembered why he was up here in the first place, and ran across the road to the opposite hut, where Sokka was waiting inside with Toph, who both looked unrecognisably different to before, to which Aang commented, "nice outfit."

"I know! But she won't believe me!" Sokka pointed angrily at Toph, who looked angrily back at Sokka's direction.

"Sorry I took so long, but you _just missed _an Earth Army patrol," Aang described, "and…how did the entrance get over here?"

"Earthbending, duh," Toph felt that sufficient for an explanation. The entrance appeared to have moved to another tapestry that draped down to the floor, as it moved aside to reveal a stunning woman in red, walking out of the diagonal tunnel to talk to the assembled 'spies'.

"We'd better hurry up if we want to get to a Fire Nation port today," Katara admonished gently. Aang was on the cusp of exclaiming how beautiful she looked in her new disguise, but after scanning her expression he quickly realised that that was the last thing on earth she wanted to hear.

* * *

Their stuff was packed and on their backs, and for some reason they were standing to attention in front of Colonel Yuung just before the entrance of the tunnel to the other side of the river. They didn't have any special _reason _to be standing to attention, but the Colonel's demeanour seemed to demand it, somehow. Momo, perched once again on Toph's shoulder, seemed to be amused at the display. Yuung paced back and forth in front of the four of them, hands clasped behind his back.

"The nearest Fire Nation-held port is Shenzhen, which the Firebenders have re-named 'Ryojun' for some obscure reason," the Colonel outlined their course of action, "it is an important hub for resources and materials heading towards the Fire Nation home islands, so there are plenty of ships heading the way you want. _However_, to get anywhere in the Fire Nation, or in the territories for that matter, you need two things: ration books, and _money_. The nature of these objects means that we are unable to furnish you with them here. Ration books are given to one citizen each as a form of identification and distributed through central offices with _very _specific printing technologies that we have no hope of emulating down here. This can be easily fixed, so long as you keep to this cover story: you are a group of rural hicks whose family settled on the far northern coast and never had the need to have ration cards issued. Now the war is 'over' you plan to visit distant relatives in the Fire Nation, whereupon you _politely _enquire where you can go to have ration books issued to you. Do not deviate from this story in the _slightest_, and keep it with you all the way to the Fire Nation itself. Money, on the other hand, is more of a problem. Unlike the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation makes use of paper notes issued from a central bank. Forgery is next to impossible, and you can't just have it given to you. But consider this your first challenge. If you can procure funds for yourself, then I will be certain you have what it takes to be effective spies. If any of you should be captured then the safety of the network takes precedent over your own lives. I will not repeat myself. Is that understood?"

"Perfectly!" Sokka answered, before blinking rapidly, "mostly…"

The Colonel carefully eyed Sokka, and everyone else in the team. They honestly did look unrecognisable to what they looked like before, but they all sported looks of determination for getting into the Fire Nation. The winged lemur seemed almost impatient. But one face seemed to waver, that of the Waterbending girl. Colonel Yuung drew closer to Katara and coughed his typical cough whenever he found himself in an uncomfortable position, "if any of you should have misgivings about your mission then I'd recommend not going at all. Any wavering of your determination could be potentially fatal."

Katara looked up at Yuung, conscious that this spiel was being addressed to her. She didn't want to set a single foot in the Fire Nation if she could help it, but she had promised herself long ago that she would protect Aang whatever it took, and that promise had remained rock-solid ever since. She had to say, "for the sake of the world, we need to do this."

"I see…" Yuung motioned, looking aside from Katara's gaze and seeming uncomfortable with what he planned to say next, "however I still have to voice my concerns over allowing a _woman_ to take part in such an important mission."

All traces of doubt, sorrow, or that matter respect for any shred of the Colonel's credibility disappeared right there in Katara's mind. She stared irritably at Yuung's face, drawling "don't…you…dare…"

"I think he has a good point, little sister," Sokka teased, leaning over and smiling evilly, "we wouldn't want our mission to be jeopardised by your _fragile…feminine…sensibilities…_"

Katara cocked an eye at Sokka's mischievous grin, clearly understanding what he was subtextually saying: _what do you think of this 'professional soldier' now, Miss. Trusty? _Unwilling to look into that sarcastic gaze anymore, Katara let her arms flow around the pouch and bend up a string of clear blue water, whipping it into Sokka's chest and sending him against a fragile section of the wall. Though crumpled against the masonry, Sokka still smiled that annoying smile of his, knowing that he had won the moral victory this day and holding a malicious thumbs-up.

Katara brought her arms down to bring the water back into the pouch and sealed it shut, eyes closed haughtily. She remained attempting to keep her self-respect until she heard a couple of giggling snorts right beside her. She turned to point directly at Aang, angrily, "would _you _like to make a comment?"

Aang hurriedly shook his head in terror, not wanting to unleash Katara's wrath. Momo cowered from the sprinkled drops of water, but Toph, despite everything, continued giggling, "I could take you on, I just don't wanna."

"Are you finished?" Yuung interrupted with a low, monotonous voice, staring each member of the prospective spy ring back into attention, as Sokka dusted himself off and rejoined the others, still smiling. Yuung continued, "believe me when I say that this outburst leaves me within a hair's breadth of chucking you all off this mission, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt for now. Just to make sure you at the very least go in the _right direction_, I am assigning you two guides who know this area well. They will accompany you until you manage to secure passage to the Fire Nation."

The Colonel snapped his fingers loudly, and out of the nearest tunnel there emerged two members of Yuung's band of renegades. One was no more than a child, and wore a copper helmet while wielding a pike in his right hand, while the other was a colossal giant of a boy whose hands looked capable of effortlessly crushing people's heads. The two of them lined up to face the group and silently stared them down. The young boy sniffed a blob of snot back into his nose derisively. The group themselves ranged from uncertain concern, through outright derision, to confusion in the case of Toph, who was wondering why everyone was reacting so strongly to these guys. Yuung didn't seem to notice the electric atmosphere of enmity between the two groups.

"Infiltrators, these two boys here were part of a small resistance cell that's extensively scouted this area. They know the path from here to Shenzhen like the back of their hands. Their names are…just a sec, let me try to recall…" Yuung pinched the top of his nose in an attempt to remember the colloquial terms the tykes had named themselves with.

"Pipsqueak and The Duke," Sokka spoke with some venom, "we've met before."

"We have?" Toph rose an eyebrow at Sokka, and then at the others, who didn't dare take their eyes off the boys.

"They were part of Jet's Freedom Fighters," Katara elaborated for the Earthbending master, breathing carefully at mention of Jet's name.

"Yeah…_once_…" The Duke practically spat at the group in anger, "we had a good deal going on until _you _came along and ruined everything!"

"Because flooding entire towns is _such _a wonderful pastime, isn't it?" Sokka accused, staring down the two of them as one who could tell their minds hadn't changed in the slightest.

"Jet abandoned us because of you," Pipsqueak butted in, honestly hurt, "him and Smellerbee and Longshot. Everything went wrong."

"Oh for the love of…" Yuung rubbed his temple in irritation before addressing the two youngsters, "why did you _volunteer _to guide these people if you hate them so much?"

"We volunteered because we know what they're really like," The Duke asserted, "they don't know the first thing about duty and sacrifice. We have to keep an eye on them, sir. They can't be trusted!"

"_We _can't be trusted!?" Sokka flustered, "taken a good look in the mirror recently!?"

"Okay, this just isn't going to work," Yuung decided, eyeing both of the groups with some exhaustion, "I'll find another team to act as your guide. You two…whatever you youngsters call yourselves…you can return to your assigned duties."

"No! …it's…it's okay…" Katara, to everyone's surprise, was the first to protest, swallowing some phlegm before continuing, "we're all a part of this, and we need to trust each other. And they probably know the area better than anyone else, right?"

Sokka spoke up to protest, but Katara's eyes stayed the warrior's lips. Yuung studied Katara's expressions carefully, and spoke calmly, "you're correct, but if some disagreement between the six of you jeopardises the safety of the mission it will be on your heads, understand?"

"Yes, sir!" The Duke affirmed loudly, staring intently at all of them. His eyes lightened, however, when they fell upon 'Kazuki', and he turned to Yuung in innocence, "is this the Fire Nation kid everyone's talking about?"

"Yes, he will be the group's guide once they enter the Fire Nation proper," Yuung informed the young 'un, "if you're intent to keep an eye on all of them, be my guest. But keep an eye on him most of all, clear?"

"Yes sir," Pipsqueak was still smouldering, but he was an optimist at heart, and looked over 'Kazuki' with a smile on his lips, "don't talk much, does he?"

"He's pretty quiet, so you probably won't have any trouble with him," Yuung stood back from the rest of the team, while Aang briefly looked up at the Colonel before turning away his gaze. The boy had long ago concluded that it was best to keep quiet, make them think he was shy, just to avoid drawing too much attention to himself.

Colonel Yuung stood aside the two groups, hands crossed behind his back, and addressed them as seriously as he was capable, "the stakes of this mission are higher than anything you could imagine, so I would appreciate it if you fully understood the enormity of your task and the risks of failure. Remember, the four of you, that if you succeed in this mission, you will be the first enemies of the Fire Lord ever to reach Fire Nation soil. Many before you have tried, and all have failed, so for you to succeed, I expect to see something extraordinary, and will not be _satisfied _with anything less."

The four of them well appreciated the hugeness of the fate they had chosen for themselves, but Katara couldn't help but butt in with something that crossed her mind upon the Colonel's statement, "we aren't the only ones who've made it. We reached the Fire Nation before, and the Blue Spirit has made it…"

"_The Blue Spirit doesn't count_!" Aang angrily burst out, taking everyone by surprise. It seemed so violent and unwarranted that those around him were paralysed by shock. He seemed so much more…passionate than he usually was.

It seemed so striking that it was at least ten seconds before Sokka chimed in, "…why not?"

Aang, realising he had made an utter fool of himself, attempted to calm down and answer Sokka's question to the best of his ability, "well…because he doesn't!"

Toph considered Aang weirdly, sensing that something was going on with his dissuasive statements. It was the same feeling of passionate duplicity as before, and they had both revolved around the Blue Spirit…or more specifically Katara mentioning the masked man. What was it about this that was making Aang so angry? He hadn't seemed so passionate about anything since he…died. Yuung, who had been glancing at the torches for this time, cleared his throat and reiterated his mission statement to the groups, "Shenzhen is half a day's travel from here, so follow your guides' instructions and be on the lookout for patrols. You shouldn't have anything to worry about so long as you do not attract undue suspicion. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," everyone intoned, nodding their determination to follow their mission through.

"Very well…move out!" Yuung pointed his thumb towards the tunnel behind him that led to the Occupied Territories on the other side of the river. As the groups filed out past him, he laid a hand on The Duke's head, "and will you take that ridiculous helmet off? This isn't a game, young man!"

The Duke, spiky unkempt hair snapping around to glare at the Colonel, felt like arguing, but Colonel Yuung's authoritative demeanour dissuaded him, and he simply muttered contemptuously, "yes, sir."

The Duke stared ahead and found himself bringing up the rear of the team that had assembled for the mission, right behind the Fire Nation kid. The pike-wielding boy couldn't shake off some weird feeling he had when Kazuki made that spontaneous outburst. Something that was bugging him about Kazuki's whole demeanour. Something…strangely familiar. It was so isolated that he couldn't put his finger on it, and his thoughts took him to suspicious places as he disappeared into the dank and dark hole.

The Colonel closed the tunnel behind the team. As he relaxed his stance, his vision wandered over to the torches that surrounded the walls of the chamber. It was just for a split second, but when Kazuki made that outburst, he could've sworn the flames had _flared _just then.

**To Be Continued…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06

* * *

**Author's Note: **Well, that's it for the daily updates. Cross your fingers and I can just about promise that you'll get something by Friday. Cross _my _fingers and I may be able to transcribe Team Avatar's brief sojourn into the Fire Nation colony of Ryojun by the end of the weekend, but no promises on that one. I have to thank you all for your response...which has been _fantastic _and tremendously encouraging...and I apologise for not being able to keep up the rate of updates, but a lot of the story I've published up until now was pre-written over the holidays, so with Philosophy study shifting up a gear (do you have any idea what a MIGHTY TOME OF ANGST Jean-Paul Sartre's _Being and Nothingness _is?) it was only inevitable that the update schedule would be effectively halved. Still, as you can see, the updates you will get will be _hewge_, so I hope that compensates at least a little.

However, I must also regretfully point out that I've been increasingly running out of motivation, and it may have something to do with how _long _it's taking Aang and the rest of the Fearsome Foursome to actually get anywhere. The only major criticism I've received is that the writing style's 'dull and plodding' and quite frankly I'm inclined to agree. Consider it a pretentious mindset that 'densityprofundity'. But there isn't much I can do about that, since whenever I write I always have a vast store of ideas that I feel needs to be put on page in excruciating detail or else they might disappear. I'm also conscious that this story doesn't seem to be getting as much exposure as the other 'Book 3' storylines, so here I'm asking for a great favour: suggestions about raising my profile.

I know I don't review or favourite much, and I'm conscious that this might make me look like a rather haughty and condescending figure, but there's just _so much _on that I don't know where to begin. I've tended to view this place more as a depository than as a community (especially back when I was first dropping off fan-fiction here nearly 5 years ago), and that really isn't fair on any of you aspiring writers, but I don't feel confident enough in myself to really make useful comments, since analysing everyone's work would be a major project on top of the major projects I'm already working hard on right now. I don't tend to contribute much at the best of times, so I don't know how without any attempt turning up cack-handed. So what would help in getting this story more noticed? I'm not a member of any of the **_Avatar _**web forums, so that's no good. Are simply comments like this sufficient? I've no idea, myself. Is the fic too angsty? Is it not angsty enough? Is it the lack of shipping? ...it's the lack of shipping, isn't it? --;

Anyway, towards certain questions regarding the fic itself: no it isn't simply meandering for the sake of meandering. It _is _going somewhere, just really slowly. The Gaang won't even be setting foot in the Fire Nation until Chapter 4 (ack! spoilers!), and it's going to be even longer before Zuko even considers switching sides (though the exact manner isn't determined yet...expect to see more of the Blue Spirit at any rate). You may have noticed here the team is now in Official Fire Nation Gear...a nod to the 'new costumes and hairstyles' expected next season...and they're going to stay in this costume likely for the rest of Book 3. The Earth Kingdom is going to be left behind entirely this Chapter, and things will take place in the Fire Nation completely from Chapter 4 onwards (assuming I even get that far before Book 3 premieres, though I _may _continue it as an AU), and I hope I get far enough to further explore Azula's omnicidal ambitions (you may have noticed her obsession with 'perfection'...it's deeply related to that. Iroh was wrong to consider Xizai the Mad to be more insane than her). You will all also have to suffer Ego-less Boring Aang for a good few Chapters more, unfortunately, since the regaining of his personality is a major part of the Book coming (rekindling the passions! Fire's all about _passion_!) And to a certain query...I deeply apologise, but Jeong Jeong is _dead_. No trick, no cat in the bag, the insane genius consumed with self-hatred and indisputably One Of The Coolest Characters Evah is regrettably no more. Do you not know the immutable Iron Law of Popular Fantasies? Always kill off everyone's favourite character. But for the couple of heart-felt eulogies, I profess innocence at his murder. I didn't kill Jeong Jeong. The _Fire Nation _killed Jeong Jeong. There's a difference. ;

I thank ye all for your support and promise that the next parts will be better. _Onward, writing fingers! _away! **End Communication!**


	5. The West Bank

The air of nervous tension suffocated any opportunity for conversation as the group made their way to the former port of Shenzhen, renamed Ryojun after conquest by the Fire Nation. The half a day it took to travel across the Occupied Territories to the port went largely uneventfully, and despite the heat that pervaded every single day this summer, and the even greater humidity than usual due to the gradual appearance of a blanket of cloud over their journey, the heat didn't seem to bother them as much. Fire Nation material was considerably thinner than its equivalents in the other nations, and the ever present aura of sweat that threatened to pour forth never entirely materialised, to the thanks of all of them. But they threatened to perspire as much from the tension as from the heat, as for the first time they approached a Fire Nation patrol on a deserted road west from the Yalujiang.

The group stared ahead and tried their hardest not to make eye-contact. Momo intentionally curled inward on Toph's shoulder to keep a low profile. Sokka was just about ready to freak out and attack the 12 soldiers who neared them, but he maintained his cool as the first of the soldiers appeared. He did nearly jump out of his disguise entirely when the leader of the soldiers addressed them, "good morning!"

"Morning to you too!" Aang smiled back and waved, impervious to the tension surrounding everyone else, "looks like rain later."

The soldier smiled and nodded in return, and the soldiers passed them by without threatening to stop them. Everyone released the breath they were holding and continued ahead. It was the first patrol they had ever simply walked past without incident, and they were too consumed in determination and terror to think about what would have happened had Aang not been there. The Duke was close to concluding that this boy couldn't have been anyone he knew. He was _Fire Nation_, for goodness' sake, and he'd never known anyone in his whole life so ethereally calm. His suspicions remained, and he kept an eye on all of them from behind. Pipsqueak, guiding from the front, couldn't keep up his paranoia for long, and was coming to enjoy the fresh air after a while. Toph was starting to feel like she was a walking catalogue of everyone's moods, giving Momo a shug of her shoulder to keep the winged lemur from gripping it so tightly, and Katara's fears swirled all around her mind. She was finding it hard to think straight.

They came across more patrols in the fullness of time, and every time their fear of the helmeted guards lessened, all the way across many hours of walking up roads, over streams, and breaking for lunch sitting on rocks and staring at each other to see who'd betray who first. Otherwise barely a word was spoken, and it seemed like no time had passed at all once they approached the edge of a large, wide river, criss-crossed on either side by small metal structures for cooling machines, loading transports and processing waste. It was when they finally looked over at the port that all thoughts of referring to it as 'Shenzhen' disappeared out of their mind.

The port city of Ryojun had been built across the opening to a large tributary snaking off the left of the main river, connected by several bridges, to one side of which were plenty of docks, pontoons and silos for transport and the distribution of materials, and to the other lay layers upon layers of red and grey buildings, dotted with a multiplicity of smoke trails. Boats of various sizes went both directions along the river and up the tributary. While the far coast was still dotted with trees, the occasional smoke stack poked out. Out of sight down the river, to the right of the group, lay the Mo Ce Sea…and the Fire Nation.

The group found they had to clamber over haphazardly-laid wooden boards that acted as a rudimentary bridge over a long trail of wooden sleepers and metallic parts that stretched away from the southern docks area towards the east and out of sight, along which were several gangs of workers, isolated from each other by a couple of _yin _or so. Aang stopped to stare down the construction that sliced through the forest to the left of them, "is this the same railroad they're building over the river?"

"You bet!" Pipsqueak was more willing to impart information than the suspicious Duke, who looked over at the behemoth with a mind to shut the big lug up, "word is they paved over the Yalu Pillars and used them as supports for a huge bridge over the river."

Aang, who regarded the building of the railroad as inauspicious in the first instance, looked visibly, though calmly, perturbed at this piece of information, "they did _what_?"

"So they're throwing down some tracks, big deal," The Duke interrupted, walking grumpily over the boards ahead of everyone, "you want to get to the Fire Nation or not? Let's get moving!"

Pipsqueak seemed confused over his companion's outburst, and simply smiled and shrugged at the rest of the group, who wearily followed the tiny figure over the tracks and into the large Fire Nation port that, despite having no right to be there, hung over everyone with a visible and near-concrete ceiling of fumes.

* * *

The Duke and Pipsqueak led the group over the bridge to the residential and commercial area of the city of Ryojun, over the bridge across the tributary, where they briefly mentioned there operated a regular ferry service. The streets narrowed considerably, and compared to the refugee camp there was a constant liveliness in people's activities. Everyone was always _going _somewhere. The cobbles they walked down rumbled with carts and tractors bringing deliveries, delivery boys ran with various objects slung over their shoulders, and conversation was loud. While there was a military presence, no one seemed to notice. While there were rich merchants with their entourages, they were sometimes seen deep in conversation with honest labourers, and over the tops of their heads clothes-lines draped with various bits of washing. The ever-present kids in the street were having to play their games around a constantly swirling whirlpool of activity, and often-times they too had their own jobs to do. There was laughter, and there were hair-raisingly angry exchanges between shoppers and shopkeepers, and between landlords and drunks. Life was everywhere here, in contrast to its signal absence in the refugee camp. It wasn't anywhere near as large as Ba Sing Se, but felt busier somehow, as if all sections of the big city's society were squashed together and concentrated in the same place.

While everyone else seemed to gawp, The Duke seemed to drown it all out and ignore it, looking straight ahead and never daring to take his eyes off the path in front of him. They all travelled out the other side of the high street and the crowds thinned as they approached the water-side. A large, well-decorated building situated at the water's edge advertised next to its sizeable door-frame 'Ferries to the Fire Nation: set sail 3 times a day.'

"Let's check when the next one leaves," Sokka suggested, leading the group inside to see a range of mostly empty benches and a sincerely bored woman sitting behind a counter reading a densely printed parchment, barely rising out of her boredom to look at the group of six people entering from the light exteriors into the stuffy gloom of the waiting room. The only other presence in the room was a small boy with scruffy hair sitting contentedly in the far corner of the waiting room engrossed with some kind of card game. The Duke and Pipsqueak slithered aside to seat themselves unobtrusively on the nearest bench while the group of four stepped forward towards the counter.

"Hello there!" Sokka waved a little _too _enthusiastically, and upon realising it attempted to express himself more naturally, "we…uh…we would like to…uh…"

"10 Shu per passenger, 5 Shu for children and the elderly," the woman leant up and regarded the prospective passengers carefully, "where do you want to go?"

"To the Fire Nation!" Sokka blurted, "we've been stuck up north farming all through this war, so with it over we thought…"

"_Where _in the Fire Nation?" the woman didn't seem to suffer fools gladly. The whole group looked around nervously when confronted with the question. There was a list of destinations on a side-wall, but waiting until they'd peered through them all was going to attract far too much suspicion.

"It doesn't matter _where_," Katara ad-libbed nervous pleasantries, "we'd like to see all of it! So we'll just take the first ferry out, please."

"Naha Island it is, then," the woman glanced briefly at the price list on her side of the counter before looking at the group again, "though I've got to warn you, the ferry's not leaving until tomorrow."

Their fixed fake smiles abruptly faded on reception of this news, and Aang was the first to digest the comment, "but the sign outside said the ferry travels 3 times a day."

"They _would_, except the number of ferries we have in service has halved in the last few days," the woman droned the message as if she had been delivering to everyone all day, "there have been a lot of attacks on shipping for the last week or so. It's become too dangerous to keep the ferries running past Ryojun all the time."

"Who's attacking our ships?" Sokka asked earnestly, wanting to know about every potential ally they could rely upon.

"_What _is attacking our ships sounds a more accurate question," the woman gossiped, "a lot of the stuff we're hearing doesn't make a lick of sense. But since there's only one ship going out at 3 'o clock tomorrow, it's heavily booked. So it's a good idea to get a seat up-front. How many of you are travelling?"

"Just us four," Katara forced another smile, "we haven't travelled from our village in the north very much, so we paid these guides to…"

"That'll be 30 Shu," the woman interrupted Katara's exposition and waited expectantly for some kind of monetary recompense. As the group looked at each other uncertainly, an idea popped into Sokka's head and he fished out the coin Aang had received three days before at the clearing.

"How's this!?" Sokka beamed as he held the coin in front of himself, but the woman seemed far from impressed at this display.

"Are you aged 12 or under?" the woman droned.

"Uhhh…no…" Sokka withered in defeat before pointing eagerly at Aang and Toph, "but they are!"

"That pays for one of them, then," the woman let a streak of sarcasm enter her voice, "but I can't guarantee seats for the rest of you unless you cough up some more cash."

"You…could use it as collateral," Toph suggested with a shrug, and the blind girl immediately got the impression that whatever face the woman was making at her, it wasn't complementary.

"I can't use a _single shiny penny _as a reservation guarantee," the woman scoffed, "I need something a little more substantial than that if you can't supply hard currency. Something valuable."

"Wait…you _barter _reservations?" Katara remarked with a twist of her eyebrow.

"Oh sure! With one-sixth the number of ferries going out, you have to be creative to stop people selling tickets on the black market," the woman remarked proudly, "everyone wants to see their relatives in the Fire Nation to take part in the victory celebrations, and there's not enough seats to take them all, so we have a system in place to make sure that people don't just sell the seats they reserve to fleece the vulnerable," the woman looked away to count off her fingers, "I've had ration tabs, family heirlooms, small children…"

The boy in the corner of the waiting room looked up, smiled and waved cheerfully when the woman mentioned him before looking back at his hand of cards. The counter clerk continued without noticing the group's briefly distracted attention, "and we always give them back once the passengers are on-board. You needn't worry if it's something precious. Just think of it as a place mark for your butts."

Katara instinctively reached inside her clothes to clutch her mother's necklace, the most precious thing she had on her person. She couldn't countenance giving that away, and it would have been stupid to show it to a Fire Nation citizen, but it reinforced in her mind that they were leaving the familiar behind now. Toph eventually shrugged, making Momo squeal in discomfort, "we don't have anything like _that_."

"What about that creature on your shoulder?" the woman smiled greedily, leading Momo to cease grumbling about his discomfort and stare at the woman in fear. Toph was unusually protective of the winged lemur, and instinctively grabbed the animal to keep it away from the scary, scary woman.

"Him?" Toph remarked innocently, "he's not _valuable_. He's just…Momo."

"I've never seen anything like him, and you see a heck of a lot of weird things passing through this port at the best of times," the woman gleamed, "c'mon, you'll be away from your pet for a _day_. It's not like you won't survive without him. Nandi! Come over here, you've got a new friend for the day!"

The boy in the corner peered over his card game at the group, seeing the woman looking at him. Nandi enthusiastically placed the cards to one side and scurried to look at the winged lemur up close. Toph was still clutching Momo close, and didn't seem ready to hand him over, "okay, I think we must have _one other thing _apart from Momo."

"Nope," Sokka placed his fists on his hips, "it's the lemur or no ferry ride."

Toph, grumbling incessantly, paused heavily before dumping Momo into Nandi's arms. Although the animal struggled, it quickly realised the uselessness of the situation. Katara, out of obligation, asked "what happens if we don't turn up?"

"Then the animal belongs to Nandi here," the woman let a finger drift towards the boy, who was having some trouble coddling the poor creature. After some time the lemur had calmed down enough for the boy to state.

"Don't worry, I'll take good care of him," Nandi smiled pleasantly and honestly, but Toph peered at the boy with unseeing eyes, and instead of the warm, comfortable smile Nandi actually had, she imagined an evil glint in his eye and a razor-sharp grin claiming perpetual ownership over Momo with his serrated, blood-drenched claws. Toph felt around for some form of appeal, but Sokka was too concerned with pulling through his plan to be concerned for the furball, while Katara had been wrapped up in her own thoughts ever since they'd decided to try to reach the Fire Nation. Aang's attitude was _inexcusable_. He had more reason than her to feel protective of the lemur, and yet had let the animal pass by without a word spoken. She couldn't see the dour look on Aang's face, but she was growing to _hate _that monolithic, never-changing heartbeat of his.

While Momo purred sadly as Nandi stroked him calm, the woman behind the counter turned her attentions back towards the group, "okay, consider yourselves reserved. I'll need a name to file it under, of course…"

"Oh! …certainly! …uhhh…" Sokka began, abruptly running into a difficulty he should have predicted earlier. With his creativity having run dry after naming 'Kazuki' he was left peering down at various objects for inspiration. "…eeehhh…ummm…" he murmured as his eyes fell upon a wad of chewing gum surreptitiously hidden under the passenger's side of the counter, "…gummyyyy…" and his eyes continued falling down towards their legs, and Toph's bare ankles, "…shin!" Sokka's eyes snapped back up at the woman, grinning ecstatically, "Gameshin! That's my name! Uh-huh! That's my name alrighty…sure is…okay…"

The woman squinted at the increasingly nervous creepy smile that 'Gameshin' twitched at her, then sighed as she dibbed a brush in a pot of ink and looked at the reservation manifest, for a moment wracking her brains trying to remind herself what the calligraphic characters for 'Game' and 'Shin' were. She didn't look at the group as she talked, "tomorrow at 3 o' clock in the afternoon. You'll be heading for Naha Island on the FLS _Gang Shen_. Be sure to have this and 30 Shu on you when you get here."

The woman stamped a square piece of paper with their reservation details written on it, and handed it to Sokka, who graciously accepted it with a nod. Pipsqueak and The Duke were already getting up to leave as Sokka looked back up at the person behind the counter who looked marginally more interested in life than when they first arrived, "you can count on us!"

"You really aren't from around here, aren't you?" the woman turned away to pick up the parchment she had been reading before this whole rigmarole began. Seeing this as a sign that they might as well leave, Sokka stepped back and turned to leave the waiting room. While the others followed, Toph briefly paused to squint in the general direction of Nandi, who had laughed when Momo briefly shook his hand out from behind the lemur's ear. Toph didn't think in images, and tended to associate things with tactile shapes. In her mind's eye, the space occupied by the cheerful, messy-haired boy was filled with a cackling, gnarled monster with greasy, splintered skin. She was becoming increasingly of the opinion that, while the life of an outlaw was her own free choice, she was keeping some really terrible company to be an outlaw with.

* * *

"What was that all about!?" Toph complained once they were some distance from the ferry terminal. She was bringing up the rear of the group as they weaved their way through the busy streets of Ryojun, and felt utterly exasperated. The activity going on around them was frenetic enough that she felt confident she could whine to her heart's content without anyone but themselves noticing.

"Come on, Toph, your relationship with that furry critter was tantamount to _abuse _and you know it," Sokka turned his head to speak down to the furious Earthbending Master, "look at the bigger picture! We've reserved a place to the Fire Nation and we'll be getting Momo back tomorrow once we board the ship _anyway_."

"But that's 24 hours from now!" Toph stopped and came over with a powerful sense of panic, "who knows what might happen to me in the next 24 hours!"

"Look out below!" came a young voice from above. The first moment when Toph felt the apple core was when it impacted sharply against the crown of her skull. Stalled by the pain, she winced and clutched her head, groaning violently in frustration and agony. From a window above, a young man was leaning against the windowsill clutching a large empty bucket that previously held various half-eaten fruits that he had intended to deposit as rubbish on the street below. The young man didn't seem terribly apologetic, "I _did _say 'look out below'…"

"Easy for you to say, you damned full-sighted jerk…" Toph muttered under her breath as she rubbed her head and caught up with the rest of the team, reminding herself, "at least it's not as bad as Ba Sing Se…"

"You really need to go the distance to find a place as bad as Ba Sing Se," Katara joked bitterly. At the mention of Ba Sing Se, Pipsqueak suddenly seemed immensely restless, and slowed down to walk alongside the team of four, gearing himself up for what he felt was an important question.

"Uh…I knew you guys were in Ba Sing Se," Pipsqueak advanced cautiously, trying to gauge reactions to his question. The others turned to look at him, while The Duke's head snapped towards Pipsqueak, disapproving of any communication with the 'traitors'.

"We were there when we tried and failed to stop Azula and her Dai Li cronies from overthrowing the Earth King, yeah," Sokka elaborated, "and when Aang was attacked in his Avatar State and lost his…life. We already told Yuung this."

"Yeah, yeah, the Colonel passed the information along," Pipsqueak affirmed. The Duke was briefly overcome by suspicion at the way Sokka described the Airbender's death, and the way he looked aside at Kazuki when he said this, but mostly he was getting annoyed at Pipsqueak daring to talk to the 'enemy'. The giant continued regardless, "but…it's just that…when Jet and a few others left us…he said he'd be going to Ba Sing Se. Made a big announcement and asked if we wanted to come. The Duke and I stayed behind, but…we haven't heard from Jet since he left. Did you meet him at all in Ba Sing Se?"

"Pipsqueak!" The Duke's anger overcame his senses, "Ba Sing Se's the largest city in the world! _Of course _they couldn't have met him! Jet doesn't exist to us anymore! We both decided that and…why are we stopping?"

The Duke paused as he realised the team had slowed to a crawl, overcome with silence, as if they'd brought up something that hurt too much to talk about. It hurt to talk about Jet in Ba Sing Se? Why was that? Katara spoke haltingly, and almost reverentially, "yeah…we met him. He was…" Katara swallowed, "he helped us against the Dai Li. He was really brave…you would've been proud of him."

Katara had looked up and smiled weakly at Pipsqueak, who couldn't do much except blink in incomprehension, "…what…what happened to him…?"

Katara tried to speak, only the words were unable to come out. Sokka decided to spare his sister the pain, speaking sternly and neutrally, "he was injured in the fighting, and he and Smellerbee and Longshot held out against the Dai Li long enough to let us escape. It's because of him that we're here at all, but…we don't know what happened to him after that."

Toph didn't need to feel their heartbeats to know this was a blatant lie. They all knew perfectly well what happened to him. No one could have survived those injuries. A small rumble came from overhead as the clouds slowly, gradually darkened and shifted, the gaps of sunshine closing in on themselves. Pipsqueak was left utterly stunned, unable to find the right expression for what he felt. The Duke was far more decisive. While the group's minds were shifted elsewhere, to a place hundreds of _li _away under a distant lake, The Duke ran forward to grab Sokka by his tunic, dragging the warrior's face down into the boy's as he angrily shrieked foam at the Water Tribesman, "_you knew this whole time and didn't tell us!?_"

"Duke," Aang laid a hand on the boy's shoulder, trying to calm Jet's protégé down, "not here."

The Duke looked into Sokka's face, which communicated sternly that whatever he felt, now wasn't the time. Eyes were starting to wander in their direction, and they didn't need the attention. The Duke calmed down from his angry height but still fumed venomously, looking from one face to the next, dressed in those clothes with those kinds of hair-styles, in the heart of enemy occupied lands, telling him that the man who had given his homeless life meaning and had followed religiously for years was left behind to die by these…_cowards_. He vented only a small portion of his feelings, flicking away 'Kazuki's' hand from his shoulder as he turned away from the group, muttering, "get your filthy hands off me, Fire Nation…"

Aang watched The Duke walk past and knew he couldn't do anything to improve things. It was getting hard. Incredibly hard. And he was running out of options. Sokka's and Katara's eyes briefly fell on Pipsqueak, who could only shrug at The Duke's reaction. Sokka, deciding that a re-assertion of their task here was necessary, held his head high, shunted his backpack up and began marching, "well, no sense dwelling on the past! We must look to the future, and _victory_!"

"Yeah…about that…" Aang interceded as they began walking again, "we _do _need funds for the ferry trip…"

"We have funds! They're just not in monetary form, yet," Sokka smiled as his plan came together, "think…what do we have on ourselves that we won't need once we get to the Fire Nation?"

"Our sanity?" Katara quipped cynically, readier than Sokka to see the flaws in their plans, "we've been living hand-to-mouth ever since we lost our stuff in the desert two months ago. We've _nothing left to sell_."

"On the contrary, we have something valuable we've been tracking around with us ever since we left the South Pole…" Sokka smiled some more and stopped walking, turning triumphantly towards the rest of the group.

Everyone stopped in confusion in the crowded street as Sokka continued smiling as if he had revealed his greatest work of art. The peering eyes from down the street had left them behind, and now they had the opportunity to look around their surroundings, as if whatever Sokka was talking about was hovering above them or something. One by one, however, realisation washed over them as their eyes fell upon the building behind the Water Warrior. Toph got a distant sense of soft fabrics piled up high on top of each other a short distance away, and the others were getting the gist from the vertical calligraphic sign that was attached to a wall next to an ornamented door that read 'Madame Norigae's Tailoring Emporium: Unique Cloth Bought And Sold'.

The sound of a passing cart on the cobbles behind them as they gazed wordlessly at the tailor shop underlined the awful brilliance of Sokka's plan. Literally seeing the writing on the wall, Katara regarded her brother's triumphant expression coldly, "you know, 'Gameshin', I really shouldn't say this as your sister, but _I really hate you_…"

**To Be Continued…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06


	6. The Promised Land

"And…where did you say you picked these up from?" Madame Norigae peered at the blue cloth with a professional's eye, her richly designed gold-trimmed dress-robes draping unnoticed over the edges of her functional bench, focused as the slender-skinned and beautiful, yet greying, woman and her brown eye was on the fabric that beheld her. The darkened sky outside never quite materialised into rain, but it still made studying the material a considerable hassle. She had light-refracting instruments that helped, the result of a successful trade, but setting the things up was always so finicky, and she didn't like going through all that effort for strips of second-hand clothing. For exquisite material like this, however, she made an exception. Sokka was close by, still far too pleased with himself.

"From soldiers returning from the Siege of the North," Sokka had been working on this story ever since this morning, "one of the ships of Zhao's fleet had been held up behind the others, and anchored just off-shore our village to re-stock. They let us have these felts in exchange for helping them get their ship back into shape. I've no idea how _they _came across them, but after the Peace was declared we decided to come down and bring these with us before we headed off to the home islands to celebrate."

"I don't think I _want _to know how they came across it," Norigae continued to peer carefully at the seams in the blue clothing, "as far as I know, whenever the Navy goes on missions to the Water Tribe, they always head south, and cloth is usually _way _down on their list of priorities. But this fabric…I wouldn't like to be the Waterbenders left without _this _stuff."

"Yeah…suckers…" Sokka smiled up at Katara, who had her arms firmly crossed in the Warrior's direction and staring with all the repressed fury of womankind. It was _her _clothing that Norigae was carefully picking apart, hand-crafted by Gran-Gran herself over many nights and modified reverentially during their time in the North. It was a good thing she'd kept her necklace on her person, or else the smarmy little sneak would've pilfered it and pawned it without a moment's hesitation, she felt.

The shop had that unmistakable feel of…_clothiness_. It was filled with soft objects punctuated by the odd sharp needle, being warm and cramped but seemingly lacking substance. The layout meant that the group was spread out all over the place. Aang was peering out the window with something resembling boredom, or as close to boredom as he could get without openly sighing or anything like that. Toph was raking her fingers over a roll of fabric and fantasizing about it being sewn and embroidered into the finest dresses the finest tailors could make, dancing in a waltz by their own accord…and then having mud dumped on them. Those fantasies made her chuckle. Pipsqueak was horrendously out of place in a clothing shop, afraid of touching the fabric that surrounded him in case it leapt up and bit him or something silly. The Duke was even more restless, an increasingly frenetic bundle of nerves, seemingly offended by the shop's _existence_. The clutter on the cobbles outside was dim and distant.

"It was a good idea to hang onto them. It's just a shame that it's dyed blue," Norigae flipped Katara's clothes over and over again, carefully feeling the fur lining between her fingers, "but this is the best threading I have ever seen."

It was peculiar how she managed to make such an overwhelmingly positive statement without sounding the least bit impressed, but she made it clear that her prognosis was very much a professional opinion. Sokka pushed into the offensive, "so will you take it?"

"Absolutely!" the seamstress pushed her instrument to one side and addressed Sokka warmly, "I've been buried in orders for cold-weather uniforms for our troops heading north. Winter clothes are enjoying an unseasonable resurgence in demand, and this material is perfect for the job. Fire Nation textiles are cheap and all, but they're as thin as fly-paper at times, honestly."

The Duke seemed suddenly roused from his restlessness, and looked up with some interest. Katara decided that it was pointless keeping her distance and attempted to engage in some conversation, "you supply uniforms for the army?"

"And navy, sweetheart," Norigae rolled up the clothes, "everyone has to do their bit. You know that as well as me. But they've got factories for most of the soldiery's clothing needs, which leaves me with supplying the higher-ups. They get frost-bite too, you know. The latest designs are on display in that side-room there, if you want to take a look."

"Thanks," Katara answered, seeing the indicated portal and stepping up to it, peering through at the mannequins that show-cased shiny, pristine uniforms specially designed for particular Commanders, Colonels and others. Katara entertained the thought of Admiral Zhao using the same tailor, and the idea of the proud, head-strong, former commander of the Fire Navy fleet that tried to conquer the Northern Water Tribe standing astride while this lovely old woman took his measurements caused an involuntary giggle to escape from her lips. The Duke appeared alongside her and seemed oddly determined to enter. Without giving it a second thought she let the boy through and turned back towards the seamstress, asking, "so will the colour be a problem?"

"Not at all," Madame Norigae crossed her legs as she turned towards the red-clothed teenager, "even if you sold it as raw material, it would easily be worth about 300 Shu. With half the work done for both male and female sizes and the footwear thrown in, I think I could bump it up to 450."

"What about the green clothes?" Sokka advanced, leading Toph to snap out of her fantasies and turn in panic towards Sokka. Norigae seemed rather dismissive of Toph's outfit.

"Eh, I guess I could give you 25 for it," Norigae turned to another corner of her sewing table where the bundle of green fabric lay.

"Oh come on! It's quality upper-class Earth Kingdom stuff! It's _gotta _be worth at least 50!" Sokka haggled with the seamstress.

"I don't haggle, son, and it may have been worth something a few weeks ago, but now I can't move for thin, silky stuff like this. It's either 25 now or wait until war with the Earth Kingdom breaks out again," Norigae analysed. While Norigae's attention was elsewhere, the warrior found himself briefly bumped half an inch into the air as the earth beneath him moved. Momentarily shocked, he guessed quickly where the disturbance came from and looked around at Toph, now looking even more irritated than Katara was and communicating everything she needed with her blind eyes: _you took my overhead collision detection, you're not going to take The Blind Bandit as well_.

Sokka knew Toph couldn't tell what his eyes were communicating, which was just as well considering it was something along the lines of _shut your trap, you whiny, self-serving brat_. He ignored the Earthbending Master and turned back to Madame Norigae, "what if we threw in something else? Would that work?"

Norigae stared at the items on the table and calculated, "I could cannibalise the backpacks, they'd be useful for extra material, especially with shipments being delayed by all these attacks. That would round it up to 500 Shu. How does that sound?"

"Perfect!" Sokka smiled and gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up, maintained despite a small pebble impacting against a soft part at the back of his head at high speed. As his thumbs-up gently transformed into a clutch around the back of his skull, Katara let out another giggle, and he continued talking business, "I think that's everything."

"Yep, quite a haul you brought down," Norigae turned back to Sokka, looking rather pleased, "do you have your rations books with you? Contributions to the war effort can get you extra tabs as a reward, and I think this stuff deserves it."

"Oh!" Sokka looked back at Katara, as the group's mind was one with worry over their lack of an important piece of identification. While Aang turned back towards the group, sensing that the cloth-related part of the negotiations was over, Sokka turned back and rubbed the sore part of his head looking apologetic, "sorry, we only just came down. We haven't picked up our ration books yet."

Norigae paused in surprise, smiling in amusement, "you really did come down from the sticks, didn't you?"

"Yup! Spent our whole lives on the farm," Sokka elaborated as calmly as possible, "never really travelled much, and we had as much food as we needed, so we never really needed ration cards."

"Well you're still travelling more than I've been," Norigae elaborated, "I haven't even left Ryo Province since the fifties."

Sokka paused in confusion at the statement. She looked like she _was _in her fifties, so that statement made no sense. Trying to think of an explanation, his eyes wandered over the walls until they fixed on a paper calendar, printed with gold trimmings and illustrated with coiling red dragons, proclaiming that it was 'The 1,372nd Year of the Fire Lord' as well as the third day of summer. Aaaah, thought Sokka, she travelled back in the _fifties_, and now it was the _seventies_. He was too used to thinking in years in terms of optimum seal-hunting seasons, rather than abstract numbers.

"I know I'm boring as heck, but can you at least _pretend _to be interested in my anecdotes?" Norigae arched an eyebrow at Sokka, who looked down and giggled nervously.

"Sorry! I was just interested in the calendar there," Sokka pointed, "it's a nice design. We don't have anything so flashy where we're from."

"Must be _really _out in the sticks to be a place where you can stand up to your eyeballs in shiny embroidery and still be impressed by a scrap of paper hanging off the wall," Norigae commented, "where did you come from?"

"Ehhh!" Sokka winced as he tried to concoct a fictional stomping ground for them all, "oh…you know…just…north. That place…up north."

"Shihezi or Yining?" Norigae queried.

"Yining!" Sokka asserted after a heartbeat.

"Huh…I had you more down as Shihezi people," Norigae turned back to rolling up the clothes on the sewing table.

"Well…" Sokka twisted the story to make it more believable, "we _grew up _around Shihezi but later _moved _to Yining."

"My!" Norigae spun round, grinning in surprise, "you move halfway across the Territories and you say you haven't travelled much!"

Sokka felt distinctly glum. He should've shut up when he was damn well ahead. Sighing deeply, he tried to re-orient the discussion towards something that wouldn't blow their cover, "so…sorry, we don't have ration books. You wouldn't know where we could pick some up from could you?"

"Sure!" Norigae stood up, apparently happy to help, "you can pick them up from the Provincial Office, on the other side of town. My daughter can show you to it. Ziya! Can you come in for a second!?"

Aang was still standing next to the window, and though he had seen the soldier positioned outside he hadn't given the uniformed person a second thought until she emerged through the open sliding doorway behind him. She held a pike in one hand and, though without a helmet, wore the unmistakeable gear of a Fire Soldier. Her golden eyes looked alert and respectful, her black hair tied up completely inside her top-knot and cascading down her back, in contrast to her mother's stylish bangs, though sharing the same slender features. She spoke calmly and eagerly, "yes, mother?"

"Would you be a dear and show these people to the Provincial Office in a moment?" Norigae smiled at her daughter and indicated the people inhabiting the tailor shop, "these people are from the edges of nowhere and never got any ration books, as if they could ever get anywhere without them."

"Of course!" Ziya smiled broadly at the assembled customers, "it's my duty to help citizens in need."

"That's a good girl…" Norigae sidled over to Sokka and whispered suggestively, "she's so dedicated and courageous, I bet she'd make a wonderful wife for someone someday."

"_Mother_…" Ziya remarked testily, tapping the bottom of her pike on the ground as a sign of her irritation, as if they were going through a long and well-established routine. Norigae didn't seem the least bit fazed.

"Honestly, her eyes aren't the only thing she inherited from her father," Norigae sighed, turning to the slightly disturbed Sokka, "so is that everything or would you like something stylish to replace these bags you're trading in? You'll need somewhere to stuff all your souvenir knick-knacks."

"Well now that you mention it…" Sokka felt more comfortable on the subject of personal accoutrements, to Katara's exhausted sighing.

"No," came The Duke's urgent voice, having finally emerged from the side-room, "we can't waste any more time here."

"A lot of things are wasting time," Sokka glared at The Duke, "finding good a good equipment carrier is not one of them."

"We have to leave!" The Duke insisted, bringing all eyes round towards the angry little boy, "there's too much left to do!"

Aang felt the need to approach and put a hand on The Duke's shoulder, "uh…is there anything wrong?"

The Duke shot an angry glance at 'Kazuki' and shook off his hand, walking past him and Ziya contemptuously towards the exit, "there won't be once we get out of here."

Ziya, looking out of the shop after the retreating small boy, looked quizzically at Aang, who couldn't do much except smile and shrug, "eheh…clothes stores make him nervous."

"I know the feeling," Pipsqueak added, trying to keep as much space as possible between himself and the endless reams of cotton. Norigae, blinking at the odd display, gave a resigned shrug of her shoulders.

"I guess that's it finished, then," Norigae turned back towards her chest of drawers and leant down to pull out a locked metal box, "when you get your ration books, come back and see me for a rebate, okay? 500 Shu, was it?"

The sounds of wheel against cobble and muffled conversations about the price of spices outside still seemed remarkably distant, a strange fantasy world of peace and domesticity far away from the lives they had come to known.

* * *

The crow-gulls were calling out over the heads of the group as Private Ziya led the group up a steep street, looking out over more of the harbour. The peninsula on which the northern half of Ryojun was built formed a ridge that plateau'd the further they got from the coast, and it was the hill leading up to this plateau that the Provincial Office was built, in order to keep a better eye on the happenings down below. It made for some exhausting walking, but they were used to tougher hikes than this in their time. The group clustered around Ziya, though one seemed determined to keep his distance.

"Your guides aren't very polite, are they?" Ziya looked aside at The Duke, who was walking in the slightly greyer shade away from the rest of the group, following the rest but looking like he was in a major sulk.

"Don't mind him, he just had a rough trip down here," Katara excused the boy, pointing with her right thumb over to Pipsqueak, still close by, "this guide's perfectly nice. You can talk to him without any problems."

Pipsqueak withdrew into shyness when Ziya looked at him, and he took off his hat to fumble with it, looking down at the ground, "my…my mother said I shouldn't talk to girls."

"Hmf…I stand corrected," Katara spoke irritably. Ziya giggled, coughed politely and continued to lead the group upwards.

"My mother wouldn't dare let any boy leave without getting one of them to speak to me," she remarked with a degree of warmth.

"How long has she lived here? It sounds like she's been here a while," Aang queried, trying to get some more information on the people he's meant to be bringing peace to.

"She was born here," Ziya revealed, "heck, my _grandmother _was born here. We have generations going back all way to the first settlements here a hundred years ago. People like her _made _Ryojun. It's the oldest, most prosperous city in the Territories, the hub of the region from the Yalujiang to the Yantai Peninsula."

"That so…" Katara responded, trying as hard as she could not to beat the Soldier's brains out against the cobbles for claiming some folksy connection with a land her people had conquered and exterminated without mercy a century before. Ziya herself didn't seem to notice the poisonous venom loaded in Katara's voice. Aang was trying to sort out the geography in his head.

"Wait…shouldn't that be 'from the Yalujiang to Pingfang Bay'?" Aang commented cautiously, "it's a lot further to the east than the Yantai Peninsula."

Ziya seemed inordinately puzzled by this statement, sorting out the geography in her head, "I've…never even _heard _of Pingfang Bay. Looks like you know the Territories better than I do, kid."

As they were all distracted, Sokka tucked his hands into the bag he acquired off of Aang. The short-haired boy wasn't using it much in any case, and he needed somewhere to store the stash they were acquiring. Sokka pulled out one of the Hundred Shu Notes that Norigae handed to him as payment. The slip of paper felt strange in his hands, as it seemed completely alien to him that something so valuable could look so flimsy. It was printed with the Fire Lord's seal and read from top to bottom and right to left: 'The Fire National Bank Promises To Pay The Bearer On Demand The Sum Of One Hundred Shu'. Norigae treated this printed, folded up slip of white paper as if it really was money. Sokka felt the surface with his fingertips. It was surreal. It was money, and yet…it was paper! Ziya decided to poke her head into Sokka's field of vision.

"Don't they have _money _where you come from?" Ziya asked. Sokka stuffed the paper note back into his bag in embarrassment.

"Of course! I handled stuff like this all the time!" Sokka dismissed with another of his patented nervous grins, "just not used to the affluence, is all."

"If 500 Shu is _affluence _to you, I'd hate to see what _destitution _looks like," Ziya analysed, to the irritable scoff of The Duke nearby, who knew perfectly well what destitution looked like when 5 slips of paper was the benchmark. Ziya continued, "we all have to make sacrifices, I guess."

"Hey, about that…" Katara wandered ahead to draw closer to the teenaged Fire Soldier, "I noticed the uniform. Are you a part of the army?"

"Close, just the local militia, although there isn't much difference between the two," Ziya seemed keen to explain her job, "my friends get called up to the front all the time. Now with the war nearly over a lot of them are coming back into the militia, but it's not over yet by a long shot."

"It's just we…don't have women in the army where I come from," Katara voiced her question as carefully as she dared. Ziya seemed deeply amused by this.

"If Shihezi Province doesn't have women soldiers, then it's obviously not doing its job right," Ziya smiled, "_everyone _has to do their bit while the boys are away."

"The boys?" Toph openly asked, and felt a distinct surge of worry erupt from the soldier as she blushed with embarrassment.

"Uh…yeah, just the men in general," Ziya looked over to Toph, unaware that she was blind, "nothing much to read into that. I'm the only soldier in the family."

"But Madame Norigae mentioned your fa…" Aang began, before realising abruptly what the subtext of the whole conversation was, "oh…sorry."

"Yeah…" Ziya turned forward to look down, her pike clacking loudly against the cobbles as they walked up the hill, "actually, he wasn't a soldier either. I mean…everyone gets conscripted once in their lives, but he'd already served his five years. He worked on bridges, dams, that sort of thing, an engineer. He was caught in a raid on a bridge he was working on, eight years ago."

Katara felt her feet slowing down. Ziya would've been the same age when her father died as she herself had been when her mother was killed. But even as Katara clutched her mother's necklace inside her red clothes, she felt against the urge for sympathy. She'd already heard one sob story from a Firebender. She wasn't about to fall for the same trick twice. Katara's feet sped up and she matched the Fire Soldier's pace, not daring to look at her. The others still felt pangs of sympathy. The Duke remained in the shade, unflinching. Ziya laughed.

"Listen to me, I sound like one of those terrible melodramas my mother always reads," Ziya laughed off her grief, "sorry, I don't usually tell everyone my life story like this."

"Hey, that's okay," Sokka comforted, "I'm sure everyone here has at least _one _dead close relative…"

"I don't," Toph countered.

"Well…_most _of us," Sokka glared at Toph, well aware that she probably made up vivid fantasies about the entirety of her extended family being trapped inside a burning building, but she was by far the exception that proved the norm. Although it was atypical that it wasn't the Fire Nation that caused them.

"Still, it's a pretty unfair way to get sympathy," Ziya expressed, trying to get a weak smile up and failing. Katara, who had previously sworn to uphold as much distance as she could from convincing Fire Nation sob stories, found this attitude strangely compelling. Whenever others had used it…sometimes even when _she _used it…it tended to be used as a weapon to undermine someone else. That was even how she used it with…him. Ziya continued after a spell of silence, "I think I need to apologise for my mother earlier."

The abrupt change of subject took Sokka off-guard, "what? Why!?"

"For what she told you earlier," Ziya turned to him, "you know, the whole 'she'll make a good wife someday' shtick. She tries to proposition me off to every young male she comes across that doesn't have a commission."

"Oh you don't need to worry about _that_," Sokka hand-waved away the complaint, up until he abruptly realised it could have been taken as an insult, "uh! That is…you're a wonderful, _wonderful _individual, but…I'm already involved with someone."

"Ooh!" Ziya seemed perplexingly interested, "may I enquire who?"

"Oh…no one you know…" Sokka dismissed, depressing himself with a deep sigh, "she's far away right now. I don't even know where."

"She a soldier too?" Ziya's voice fell.

"Yeah…" Sokka felt immensely down upon saying that, not knowing her fate, "she's not from where I come from, though. She's…well…it's complicated."

"Tell me about it…" Ziya faced forward, deep in thought over something, "so you _have _heard of women soldiers where you come from?"

"Yeah!" Katara was starting to feel a rapport with this girl, "it's just we don't get many soldiers _at all_ where we came from."

"Huh, it's not surprising you haven't seen anyone like us, then," Ziya commented, "your place sounds a little podunk for my liking."

"It's home," Aang shrugged, feeling he might as well inject something into the conversation.

"Well people like me plan to go places once this war is over," Ziya spoke almost conspiratorially, "we work in the farms and in the factories keeping our armies supplied. And did you hear? Fire Princess Azula _herself_ negotiated the Peace with the Earth Kingdom. _And _killed the Avatar in the bargain. She's an inspiration to people like us."

"Yeah…I'm sure she's incredible…" Aang drawled, instinctively feeling the huge scar on his back.

"But for now I'm stuck here having to look after my mother," Ziya let herself be overcome by bitterness, "she fought tooth and nail to keep me out of the militia, _and _she never wants me marrying a soldier. All because she doesn't want me out of her sight, because she's too damn lonely all the damned forsaken Agni-damned time. Do you have any idea how _frustrating _that is!?" Ziya turned angrily to the others, who couldn't do much except shrug, and so she pressed forward in fury, "all the men are in the army, and the only people left are horrible, overweight merchants and old men who never met anyone in their entire lonesome lives…"

"You know, I'm sure there are perfectly _nice_ old, overweight merchants out there," Katara tried to calm Ziya down.

"No! _I_ want to choose who I love and don't love! She doesn't have the _right _to tell me what I want! I'm sick of being her maid, stuck in this place all my life! I hate waiting like this! _I hate her!_" Ziya threw her pike and embedded it into the ground beneath her feet, breathing harshly. The rest of the group stopped in their tracks, unsure what to do lest they blow their cover somehow. She calmed down slowly, and in a way that seemed utterly unique to her, burst out laughing. More than last time this was loud, uncontrollable laughter, so that she had to lean on her pike to keep herself from falling over. She looked behind her, breathing hard in-between laughs with tears in her eyes, "not much use you can make of a soldier who keeps making an idiot of herself, huh?"

"There's something more than problems with your mother, isn't there?" Toph stepped forward, knowing a defence mechanism for a larger problem when it measured on the richter scale.

"Oh…just ignore me, it's nothing…" Ziya turned and pulled her pike out of the ground, "I've just had a bad week, that's all."

The rest of the group followed as Ziya led them up to the top of the street. Where they walked up there was a long railing leading back down towards the edge of the docks made up of two metal rods side-by-side. The lengths that the group had travelled meant that they hadn't had to resort to it once. The crow-gull calls were getting progressively louder as they neared the top, and they finally seemed to get to a part of the hill that levelled out to ninety degrees, leading to a long street running side-to-side across the hill. Ziya paused and pointed her pike to one end of the street, while on the other two kids, a boy and a girl, had gathered along with a flat board of wood for whatever reason.

"That way down there is the Provincial Office. You can't miss it, it's the biggest building in the street, and the most well-decorated," Ziya informed, "ours is normally pretty efficient, so…"

"WHEEEEE!" came the cry from the other side of the street, as the two kids who were holding the wooden board across from them set off riding it down the rails leading all the way down to the docks below. It looked fast, dangerous, and immensely fun.

Aang pointed a wary finger at the rails and looked to Sokka, "can I…?"

"No," Sokka, arms crossed, answered with finality. Aang let his hand drop, realising that they didn't have time for such things in any case. He looked back up at the rest of the group and gasped involuntarily. As the others looked at what he was looking at, everyone noticed that Ziya was staring solemnly at the rails with tears in her eyes. She looked up, and tried to laugh away her embarrassment, far more forced than before.

"Sorry…it's just something I remember…growing up around here," Ziya wiped her tears away, "we used to call it the 'terror-rail'. For all I know they still do. Just jump on a board and career on down until you either splash into the drink or get the skin of your knees sheared off. You had to have two on each board, to keep the weight distributed. Otherwise you just fly off and get yourself hurt in the process."

Ziya wandered over to touch the railings, "there was this boy I always partnered with, Muzen. The other kids picked on him because he always partnered with a girl. Called him a wuss and so forth. Now, you know I couldn't let that one lying down, so you know what I did? I said I could do it better than any of them."

"Bet you showed them up good," Toph gleamed, knowing a young female ass-kicker when she heard one. Ziya just laughed.

"In a way. I tried going down it on my own, just to show them," Ziya looked back at the rest of them, "but you know those moments in stories when the small one shows up all the big ones? That only happens in stories. I got halfway down the terror-rail before I flew off in a spin. I'd never felt that bad in my whole life. All the other boys ran down to me, and I thought 'oh yeah, here it comes, they're coming down to say how they told me so'. Except…they were amazed! None of them had ever got that far down the terror-rail before!"

"That must've made you feel better," Sokka made a pleased smile.

"Yeah, it did," Ziya smiled wistfully, "until I fell unconscious. Spent a week getting my head back into shape. Muzen visited me every day. He was always so sad, though, and I kept asking him why, since I managed to do better than any of them. And you know what he said? He was certain I was going to go all the way."

Ziya's story ended, her hand resting contemplatively on the railing, and Katara knew who that boy was, "he's the one you love, isn't he?"

"When I said I haven't had a good week, I really wasn't kidding," Ziya said mournfully, "Muzen's a soldier in the army. Part of the border regiment. My mother won't let me near him because he's a soldier. She doesn't want me going off to somewhere dangerous."

"Where is he now?" Aang asked. Ziya turned away, choking on the tears.

"I don't know…" she muttered quietly, "I haven't heard from him in a week. We always meet at the same garrison post every few days, but he never came back from one of his patrols. They say he could be missing. We've…we've been receiving ransom notes. About captured Fire Nation soldiers. But without names we can't be sure. They just say 'Pay us or face the consequences'."

The group stayed silent. There wasn't anything they _could _say. The Duke was leaning against a wall on the other side of the street, watching suspiciously, impervious to Ziya's tale. Sokka advanced the obvious question, "why are you telling us this?"

"I've been wanting to tell _someone _all week!" Ziya cracked, steadying her nerve to face them again, "I don't know why, but I think I can trust you. I don't know what's going to happen to Muzen, but at least if someone at least _knows _he's out there…I don't know. Just…don't tell mother. She doesn't know."

"Of course," Katara readily agreed. Ziya turned away, lazily descending the hill along the rail.

"She may sound bad, but she means well, really, she just doesn't want me to feel what she felt when she lost dad…" Ziya paused to sigh deeply and sobbingly, "guess that showed me, huh?"

Ziya continued walking down, without any goodbyes. It wasn't a moment where they could say anything. Instead all they could do was watch the young girl in the uniform of their enemy trundle defeated back down the hill. Her pain drifted out of every pore, and burst out at the slightest provocation, leaving what had been a lively and delightful young woman a broken mess. They all felt her pain as part of theirs. Sokka didn't know if his love was alive or dead, Toph had been trapped in her home by the insecurities of others, Katara knew acutely about the death of a parent, and Aang…he once had the power to stop all this, and now he couldn't do a single thing. The wounds of the world ran deeper than even he knew, an open gash they were all falling into.

Pipsqueak, uncomfortable with the silence, wandered over to The Duke. The boy seemed intensely angry at their sympathy, and what he saw as cowardice, in those who dressed like that scum who had taken this place for themselves. He slammed his fist against the wall in impatience, shouting "we haven't got all day! Let's get your stinking books!"

The group, knocked out of their pre-occupation, wandered dreamily into the street Ziya had mentioned. Ziya herself disappeared into the streets below, her pike thunking against the cobbles every few feet, lost in the blizzard of her own worries.

**To Be Continued…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06


	7. Asymmetrical Warfare

General Fong's office was crowded with more piles of paper than he'd ever seen in his entire life. It was something he had to witness from a corner, since his desk was now occupied by an attentive and meticulous General Gin Hong, picking up pieces and discarding them with breathless swiftness. He seemed to bring a cavalcade of paperwork wherever he went, and the sheer amounts of it practically made an indent on his base's foundations. From Fong's vantage point, resting against a wall with his arms crossed, having little to command his own forces except 'carry on', he felt a little surprised at how absorbed the new General of the Twelfth Army was in the mounds of felled trees that littered his desk.

Fong was a man of action from the gash hidden under his hair to the blisters on the soles of his feet, and cared little for paper-work. He was under the impression Gin Hong had the same kind of temperament, and yet the General didn't seem the least bit bored by the depressingly necessary work. Where Fong was prepared to do whatever was necessary, Gin Hong seemed to be consumed by an even deeper need for utility, regardless of where it was needed. If he felt it necessary to stamp pieces of parchment until his fingers were numb, he would do it without hesitation. If he felt it necessary to claw off the top of his closest companion's skull with a twist of his ankle on the stony ground, he'd do it in a heartbeat. Fong felt soldiery to be the highest of honours. Gin Hong, he observed, wasn't in it for honour, or even for enjoyment. He was simply soldiery made flesh.

General Fong heard the shuffle of feet emerging from the hallway outside, and shifted his attention to Gin Hong's closest confidant, the sarcastic but strangely disarming Major Mugong, with his helmet under his arm in respect to the General. He stopped in the middle of the room, stood to attention and saluted, "sir! We investigated the tip-off we received for the Seventh Yalujiang Refugee Camp."

"And?" General Gin Hong dropped the piece of parchment he was looking at on the desk and held his hands together while listening to the Major.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing, sir, and that isn't all either," the Major revealed his disappointing news, "we can't get any information from the locals. They don't trust us, sir. Colonel Yuung has the complete support of the civilian population in the Yalujiang Strip. Even the kids see him as a hero."

"Now you see why I haven't made a single arrest in two weeks," Fong offered his opinion, which Gin Hong duly noted.

"This was just to gauge the locals' reception," Gin Hong picked up a relevant piece of paper from the pile on his desk, despite having no visible ordering system, "I'd anticipated as much when I heard of Yuung's reputation."

"Who is this guy, anyway?" the Major spoke out, surprisingly to Fong since he'd never allowed this lax a regime in his own regiment, and yet Gin Hong seemed to have struck the perfect balance of running a tight ship and letting his inferiors express their opinions. The Major continued, "Colonel Yuung, I mean, sir. In the space of a couple of weeks he's turned into public enemy number one. What makes him so special?"

"He was the leader of the forces of King Bumi, from Omashu," Gin Hong read from Yuung's bio on his desk, "Bumi ran one of the most active fiefdoms in the Hundred Years War, so our Colonel must have amassed a fairly expansive reservoir of experience before the city fell."

"I met him once, briefly, when I travelled to Omashu for a regional war council two years ago," Fong related his own experiences to the two members of Twelfth Army, "he's very intelligent, but also very stubborn. When Bumi proposed a truce to lure the Fire Nation into a trap, Yuung spoke out against it. He views any compromise as a weakness. But he was also one of King Bumi's closest confidants. Yuung must have received training from him, and Bumi was renowned for his out-of-the-box thinking."

"Bumi was never _in _a box to begin with," Gin Hong juggled from one piece of paper to the other, "he's adapting to changing circumstances. Omashu stood longer than any citadel outside the Walls because it was such an advantageous position to hold out against a siege from. But in the last few years of the War the Fire Nation shifted tactics from utilising mobile infantry corps to a more concentrated, combined arms doctrine. Defences like that at Omashu were useless against such tactics, and the Northern Water Tribe barely survived a similar siege. That's why Bumi let the troops in, to save his city from destruction."

"Excellent plan," Fong commented on a man he personally considered a coward, and let the bitterness make itself known. Gin Hong was strangely much more forgiving towards the captured King.

"Don't underestimate him, General Fong," Gin Hong regarded the base commander, "the tactics we're facing right now are a result of his doctrines. It would be good to learn from his example."

"Letting the enemy inside the gates? What kind of example is _that_?" Fong regarded.

"He faced facts, and so should we," Gin Hong looked carefully at Bumi's record sheet. The King was still a prisoner of the Fire Nation, just as Omashu was still 'New Ozai' despite the Peace, so his personal biography only went so far as his capture. Gin Hong spoke with a subtle hint of admiration, "the days of tactical geniuses leading men in exquisitely-planned manoeuvres against the enemy came to an end when the Dragon of the West retired. In many ways he was the last of his kind. The Fire Nation discovered something better. Who needs tactical finesse when you can just line up a mechanized wall of steel and shout 'charge'?"

"So you're saying the two of us are walking dinosaurs?" Fong didn't like the subtext of what General Gin Hong was saying.

"Not quite, at least not in the face of _him_," the General held up Colonel Yuung's wanted poster for Fong to see, "this is not a man who leads vast armies into battle. He forms networks of sympathisers and attacks the weak links of the enemy using irregular soldiers dispersed amongst the populace. He avoids battle and attacks the enemy's civilian population directly, inciting attacks against his own civilian support base that in turn increases his support. Overwhelming enemy force means nothing to the organisation he commands, stemming directly from the population he resides in, and even if he himself were killed, someone else will take his place and continue his struggle that much more effectively with a martyr to rally behind. His strategy is not to _defeat _the enemy, but _outlast _him, making their position that much more untenable."

"That's a coward's way of waging war," Fong commented.

"If all there was to fighting a war was _courage _we'd be walking into the Fire Lord's palace by now…" Gin Hong breathed in to correct himself, "or the Water Chieftains' throne room, for that matter."

"So, what you're saying, sir…" the Major pointed his free finger upwards, "is that victory against Colonel Yuung is impossible."

"_Exactly_!" General Gin Hong thwacked the wanted poster against the desk in frustration, "we've picked the absolute, complete, fundamentally _worst _kind of enemy to fight against! You know what, General Fong? You were _right _not to try to face him down. If he turns his attentions to Earth Kingdom 'collaborators' we're going to have an utter bloodbath on our hands."

"If we're going to be rid of this pest we have to be decisive," Fong concurred.

"Decisive, yes, but more than that we have to be _careful_," Gin Hong let his head rest in his hands, "his insurgency is still in the formative stages, but he's already got a complex system of subterfuge in place. We could be investigating tip-offs from here to doomsday and never get anywhere near him. Heck, they could be the ones _sending _tip-offs just to tie up our resources. There's next to nothing we can do with the forces we have. Yuung's operation is completely water-tight. If we could just get someone _inside_…"

"I believe I may have the answer to your predicament," the Dai Li agent spoke from over Gin Hong's shoulder. Reacting violently with a gasp of shock, the General reeled back from his seat, his wayward arm scattering papers off of his desk. He quickly spun round to gather as many piles of paper as he could in his arms before they toppled over onto the ground. Fong smiled as Gin Hong re-oriented himself.

"For the love of earth, will you _stop doing that_!?" Gin Hong erupted furiously at the Dai Li, "do you want to give me a heart attack at thirty-seven?"

"My apologies, sir, but I felt you would find this information useful," the Dai Li smiled under his hat, his eyes unseen, looking more like the master than the servant, "I am pleased to report that the secrecy of Colonel Yuung's insurgency will soon no longer be a issue."

* * *

The Fire Nation soldier was separated from the red-clothed, nervously-smiling group of four young travellers before him by a grid of wood that allowed them to see each other without fear of some maniac drawing a knife on him. He was especially glad of this since they did not look like sane people.

The Provincial Office was a military operation, just like every other aspect of Fire Nation civilian life. There was no distinction between the two, as every aspect of the Fire Nation was dedicated to the prosecution of warfare. It was this total mobilisation that had sustained the small, overcrowded island nation for a hundred years of war against the rest of the world. The martial atmosphere extended into the floor, ceiling and walls of the office, as the long line of desks was each manned by a soldier in uniform, albeit a uniform designed for sitting down for long periods of time in. It may have been a job for the cushy, but that was the intention: whether vulgar or effete, the Fire Nation kept track of every young adult breathing inside their borders, and put them to use exactly where their talents suited. This particular soldier was consequently a man used to long, boring, still days, and didn't mind so long as he felt he was doing his duty towards the Fire Lord. It was the violent bits in-between he didn't especially care for.

"It is extremely irregular to issue ration books to people from outside the province of origin," the thinly-bearded soldier explained to the group, "not unknown, to be sure, but definitely unusual."

"Wellll…I guess we're just unusual…sort of…people…" the oldest boy continued to smile, in a way that made the soldier glance preparedly at the string that, once pulled, set off the Provincial Office's alarm bells and had these weirdoes escorted out, preferably to a place of mental rehabilitation. Sokka glanced around and muddled his way through, nervously, "so, how does this…process…work?"

"Easy. We ascertain your identities and print the relevant ration books for you, to use according to the _clear _and _straightforward _instructions written within," the soldier painstakingly explained, "we just need your name and your place and year of birth."

"Sure!" Sokka took a few crucial seconds to remember what he had called himself before, and once he formed the frame of his autobiography he launched into a display of ego-centrism, "my name is Gameshin, proud son of the Province of Shihezi, born in the one thousandth, three hundredth and fifty-seventh year of our wonderful and most illustrious Fire Lords!"

The soldier stared down 'Gameshin', the floppy-haired imbecile standing before him with a cockily suggestive smile, and found his hand briefly flirting with the pull-string for the alarm bells before sighing deeply and scribbling his nib of ink on a small slip of paper, "so that's 'Gameshin, Shihezi, thirteen-fifty-seven', yes?"

Sokka, realising he'd made a damned fool of himself, slunk back and issued a quiet, "…yes."

"Thank you, citizen," the soldier scribbled, looking back up at the others, who decided on evidence that the nervous smiles just weren't going to work. Their 'guides' were waiting outside, having a nervous affliction to Fire Nation strongholds, leaving them to wallow through the trials of convincing a genocidal regime they were ordinary, law-abiding people, despite all the evidence to the contrary, alone. The soldier decided that while he was busy finding the appropriate things to stamp the papers with he might try to help the people in front of him, "although, just to warn you, those dates may be null and void a few months from now. Word is that the Fire Lord is going to announce a New Age once the Water Tribe is defeated, resetting the calendar, so to speak."

"Oh, really!" Sokka tried as hard as he could to sound enthusiastic about the destruction of his home country, "that's…interesting!"

"More interesting than you might suspect," the soldier remarked, looking from side to side and leaning over subversively, "don't tell anyone, but something _really big _might be happening at the End of the Summer."

The entire group stood rock-still, struck by the overwhelming clang of the Understatement of The War-Torn Century. Ten seconds of utter silence were punctuated by Aang mumbling, "you don't say?"

"Indeed!" the soldier's eyes fixed on the small girl of the group, "and who might you be?"

Toph didn't respond, and Aang, realising the short fuse that had been lit just then, urgently nudged the blind girl to make her realise it was _her _the soldier was addressing. Toph jumped a little but quickly calmed herself and reeled off, with little effort, a name she'd been mulling over for some time, "Ming Zhi, Shihezi, 1360."

Aang was actually rather impressed at the name, and Toph's certain delivery of it, leaving him momentarily distracted when the soldier asked him the same question he'd asked Toph. Realising abruptly that he was being called upon, Aang murmured, "uh…K…Kazuki, Shihezi, 1360."

The soldier turned his attention to Katara, having not said anything under the assumption that she would know what was next. But the Waterbending girl hidden underneath those red clothes and brown bangs didn't respond the glare, having a look of deep concentration on her face. Aang, wondering if she hadn't got the message, nudged her slightly to find that she wasn't responding to that, either.

Katara was thinking hard about her name. She realised she would be stuck with this name for a long time to come, but the thought of being addressed as a member of the Fire Nation made her skin crawl. She had never once contemplated the possibility of going under a Fire Nation name, the idea was so alien to her. This whole expedition was alien to her, as if she wasn't really going, but leaving herself behind and putting a doppelganger in her place. She had been reluctant of this enterprise from the beginning, trying to find someway, somehow, of avoiding it. But it couldn't be done.

She wracked her brains for something to call herself that wouldn't make her physically wretch at the pronunciation of it. There was nothing she could think of, no trace of nobility that she would gladly or willingly subscribe to. The Fire Nation was the enemy, a race of murderers. How could she look past that?

And yet there was a human face to it, all the same. She'd seen it in Ziya, a citizen of the Fire Nation with real troubles and real emotions and as far from her conception of a murderer as she could imagine. She had taught herself that sob stories from the Fire Nation didn't count as sob stories, not after what happened with _him_. The doubts swirled around in that moment when she was being asked to give up her identity. She clutched onto the sure anchor of her self, her mother's necklace, inside her clothes.

She had been thinking so much about her mother, recently. These worries about entering the Fire Nation…all the worries that have driven her through most of her life, stemmed from her mother. And yet…the first time she had ever made a connection with someone in the Fire Nation was directly related to her lost mother. Something they had in common…

* * *

"What do you mean, 'something we have in common'?" Katara remembered wiping her tears away, confusion overcoming sorrow and inciting her to look around at that scarred face. That face had always been the face of the enemy to her, the face of her mother's murderers, the face of hate. But in that moment that face was empty of fury, empty of vengeful hatred. It was completely open, and warm.

"My mother…I was closer to her than anyone I ever knew…she disappeared when I was little," Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, who had fought against her and tried to capture Aang so many times that she had lost count, looked down at the ground and slunk to the side of the crystalline cavern they were trapped in, only two weeks before, "it was on the same night my grandfather died and my father ascended the throne. Even though he was younger than Uncle Iroh he still managed to accede. And…that night my mother appeared before me one last time…I was still half-asleep at the time…thought it was a bad dream…"

"Why did she disappear…?" Katara had edged closer, fascinated by this moribund Prince, so far from her ideas of what he really was. She remembered that she really had crawled, on her hands and knees. The sandy dirt beneath her hands was sharp, like tiny crystals. She still felt those sharp pinpricks against her hands. She looked completely into Zuko, "you said the Fire Nation took her away…"

"I don't really know what happened…it was part of something going on between my father and grand-father…something about 'knowing the pain of losing a first-born son'," Zuko had turned towards Katara, that weak smile remaining ever-present in her mind, "Uncle Iroh was returning from his siege of Ba Sing Se, having lost his son, Lu Ten, there. My father had claimed that since he still had children, he had a better claim to the throne than Uncle did. My grand-father was angry at that."

"What has that got to do with your mother?" Katara had gotten lost in these details of the Fire Nation royalty…it was too far away and abstract for her.

"My mother was the only one in my family who seemed to really care for me. More than my father…probably even more than my Uncle…yes…_much _more than my Uncle. She was the only one who wanted me to be what _I _wanted to be. Who was happy with me the way I was, who didn't want me to be someone else…or dead. She protected me, encouraged me. The last thing my mother said when she said goodbye to me in the middle of the night was 'everything I've done, I've done for you'," Zuko had looked up at the crystals before. Katara remembered them reflecting in his scarred eye, "I'm not sure…but…I think she sacrificed herself for me…"

Zuko had briefly become wet at the eyes at that, but breathed his way through the tears, preventing them from overtaking him. Katara could see what he was thinking. It didn't seem like a worthy exchange to him. Katara tried to soothe him, "I'm sorry."

"You've got nothing to be sorry about," Zuko turned his eyes away. He hadn't wanted Katara to see the tears, "it was my fault. I know my mother is dead, and I should be dead instead of her."

"My mother sacrificed herself for me, too…" Katara had reasoned with the Prince. His head had slowly turned towards hers, and their eyes had met, closer than ever before. She continued, haltingly, "I saw it happen before my eyes. She died protecting me from a Fire Nation raid. There were so many times I wish she hadn't, that I had died instead of her…but if I thought like that, if I let those thoughts consume me, then my mother's sacrifice would be in vain. It was her that inspired me to learn waterbending."

Zuko was contemplative for a while. She had no idea what was going on inside that mind. Who knows, maybe her intervention had just made things worse? She'd never know. But he spoke after a long while, "my mother inspired me to never give up. To keep fighting. To keep going against the odds because…that's who I was."

"I guess you could say the same thing about my inspirations," Katara had let a small smile escape from her lips. She'd let a _smile _escape.

"Your mother…" Zuko spoke with deadly earnestness, and turned to look directly…_piercingly_…into her eyes. Katara had gasped at the suddenness of the glance, before he asked, "what was her name?"

That he wanted to know physically shocked her. That Zuko…_Zuko _of all people, had asked what her mother's name was. Even Aang hadn't done that. She'd been fooled so easily, fooled enough to smile when she responded, "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

That smile he returned, however, that troubled, deep smile, saying so many things at once…that his mother had left such a trace on him that he looked longingly into the distance before he could say her name…that was the Fire Nation she wanted to meet. The Fire Nation that would sacrifice themselves for the lives of others, that would care for and inspire her young, that connection, that devotion she had seen in Ziya, that compassion that she had witnessed awakening in Zuko, that same connection that connected Katara to everything that drove her…that's what she would be. Fire Prince Zuko spoke with calm, affectionate reverence, "her name was…"

* * *

"Ursa…" Katara spoke with complete, utter firmness and conviction to the soldier in the Provincial Office of the Fire Nation city of Ryojun, letting that be her identity, her self, in no uncertain terms, her eyes narrowed and her fists clenched, "…Shihezi Province, 1358."

The others were taken aback by Katara's…or 'Ursa's'…forcefulness in asserting her name. The soldier was utterly confused by the display, but he was left at least very certain that was her actual name. He scribbled the details on the piece of paper and wearily stamped all four pieces with the Fire Lord's seal, handing them behind him to a younger girl, also in uniform, stating, "have these processed, will you?" The soldier held his hands together and leaned forward near the edge of the wooden grill, speaking informatively, "your ration books should only take a few minutes. If you could just sit over there, they'll be with you shortly."

The group, left uncertain after Katara's…or Ursa's…or Katara's…they weren't entirely sure which…outburst, lingered around the empty space in front of the desk, without direction. Katara was the first to take affirmative action, striding over to the benches and sitting down. The group, shrugging internally, followed suit. They waited silently, twiddling fingers and thumbs, looking around at the promotional posters and the illustrations of themselves emblazoned 'most wanted', which seemed to be depressingly degrading in inkmanship for some days, irritating Sokka since he appreciated his handsome face more than anyone's. Aang remained still, knowing there was nothing to do but to wait patiently. However, his attention shifted to Toph, who was looking quizzically in Katara's direction.

Since Toph couldn't strictly look _at _anything, Aang's attention turned to Katara. She seemed still enough, but on closer and closer look he could see the state of her skin. She was trying hard to hide it, but she was shuddering violently, and one of her hands was clasped around something hidden in a pocket of her clothes. Whatever it was, her hand gripped it so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

* * *

The clouds had spent so long building up rain to dump upon the heads that by the time they'd left the Provincial Office they'd moved on and decided to rain elsewhere. A growing humidity was emerging in the air, the result of large torrents of water cascading on hills beyond the horizon, the resulting water vapour drifting over the city of Ryojun like a warm, wet, insubstantial blanket that…wasn't really anything remotely _like _a blanket, but was less like anything else the group could think of. Sokka was leading the group forward, ration books safely in his bag bearing their Fire Nation names, completely ready to ingratiate themselves inside the lands to the south-west except for the small matter of getting over there and claiming their lemur back, but somehow they'd managed most of their objectives. It was a gratifying experience for Sokka especially.

"I love it when a plan comes together!" Sokka remarked as he marched ahead of the rest of them.

"I gotta say, I'm impressed," Katara remarked, arms crossed, largely recovered from the traumas of the birth of Ursa the Good Fire Nation Woman, and ready to lay into Sokka's over-optimistic assessment of the situation, "now why couldn't you plan like that when we tried to steal our fish back from Satta the Witch Woman?"

"_Never _mention that name to me ever again," Sokka's enthusiasm disappeared in a puff of annoyance.

"Story to tell?" Toph enquired, wondering who 'Satta the Witch Woman' was.

"We had this old woman in the Southern Water Tribe who lived apart from everyone else, and one day we were chased off while we were ice-fishing near her home," Katara elaborated, "_genius-boy _here had the smart idea of…what was it? _Tunnelling through the ice_?"

"It would've worked if the stupid woman hadn't built her house near such thin ice!" Sokka complained, "and the sign of a good strategist is to take the bold initiative, something you wouldn't understand, Katara."

"_Ursa_…" Katara insisted forcefully, "we have to call each other by our fake names, now."

"What?" Sokka replied testily, "they couldn't tell who we were from the talk of ice-fishing and Satta the Witch Woman?"

"You said her name!" Toph pointed out amusedly.

"It's not like anyone's even paying attention to us," Sokka ignored the blind Earthbender, "and what kind of name is 'Ursa' anyway? Where did you pick _that _up from?"

"Oh…!" Katara flinched in embarrassment, trying to hide her flushing cheeks, "just…some place."

"You're hiding somethiiiing…" Toph sidled over suggestively, to Katara's chagrin.

"_Just…some…place_!" Katara gritted her teeth, going on a counter-offensive, "and what about 'Ming Zhi'? I've no idea where you could've gotten that."

"I've been thinking it over for some time, it means 'bright iris'," Toph marched forward smiling, as Sokka gradually slowed down to join the rest of the group, "I like it! It shows up my feminine side."

"I didn't even know you _had _a feminine side," Katara remarked sceptically.

"Exactly!" Toph revealed her cunning plan, "that way, I lull people into a false sense of security before I crush them betwixt my mighty stone vice of _doom_!"

"Awww!" Sokka leaned down and made a googly-voice at the Earthbending Master, "she's so cute when she turns all homicidal!"

Sokka leaned over to accentuate the googliness until he found his feet disappearing from underneath him and his face impacting harshly against the ground. Whimpering somewhat, Sokka picked himself up and brushed himself off, only to find himself falling perpendicularly backwards when Toph sliced the air beside her with her palm, bringing the cobbles beneath the Warrior back into position and Sokka flat against his back. He leaned up and groaned loudly, rubbing his back achingly.

"Two nights in a comfy bed undone in just a few seconds…" Sokka complained, while Aang held out a hand to help the disguised Water Warrior up.

"Try having a hole in your back," Aang comforted Sokka, "gives you a whole new perspective on things."

"Thanks…Kazuki, but I'd much rather be alive than illuminated, any day," Sokka straightened up his back and walked to the others as they came to a cross-roads in the narrow cobbled streets lined with grimy, pagoda-topped houses. He appealed to the group, "anyway, now we got the ration books, let's get back to Madame Norigae's! I want some extra grub once we get to the Fire Nation!"

The others turned to Sokka, feeling this eminently good idea, and Katara advised, "might give us a chance to get used to the local cuisi-"

"No!" The Duke stood in the street between them and the hill leading downwards towards the sea-side docks, looking angrily assertive, "we can't go back there!"

"…why not?" Toph wondered sceptically.

"You'll see why soon," The Duke responded, untrusting of the former Avatar's companions, and staring ahead to walk up the hill through the middle of the scattered group, "in any case if we don't leave now, we'll never make it back before night-fall."

Everyone else looked towards Pipsqueak, who made his usual shrug at the rest of the group and began following The Duke. Sokka decided it wasn't wise to press the issue, "guess we're heading back tomorrow, then."

The group, one by one, in a haze of uncertainty, began making their way towards the edge of the city. There were a few passers-by, but the business of the lower streets gave way to an odd calm this close to the top of the town. There was a bridge further up the tributary Ryojun was built on that would entail not having to pass through the centre of town again, and this was what they made their way towards. A scattering of people made their way in the opposite direction, but few came by this way except by freight, and the long travel up hill coupled with the even longer travel into the city led to the two types of travellers walking past each other in dulled tiredness, barely noticing each other.

Hence it was that when the two groups of travellers, heading in opposite directions, passed each other, the group of six disguised insurgents didn't notice the other group of two, one a slender, unkempt, scowling girl and the other a tall young man half-hidden inside his hat. That group didn't notice them either, too consumed in their own troubles, but a passing meeting of eyes irritated The Duke no end, until realisation burst through the surface of his consciousness like a geyser erupting. He turned slowly, as the others did one after another, wondering what the angry young boy was stopping for. The other group of two, realising they were being stared at, turned around slowly in turn, and they both realised what it was they had noticed out the corner of the eye. The sight took their breaths away.

"Smellerbee?" The Duke wandered forward with wide eyes, as if checking it wasn't a mirage, "Longshot?"

"Duke?" Smellerbee stepped forward, hands reaching forward for the former Freedom Fighter, worry rapidly giving way to ecstatic relief at seeing her comrade again, "_Duke_!"

The two, wide-smiled and teary-eyed, flung themselves at each other. As The Duke was barely two-thirds the height even of Smellerbee, the war-painted girl ended up spinning him around like a top, laughing their heads off at seeing each other again. The two toppled over, still laughing without a care in the world as Pipsqueak thundered past them to grapple Longshot in a heartfelt hug. Longshot, wordlessly exhilarated at seeing his compatriots again, allowed the titan to squeeze much of the life out of him without uttering a word of protest. The rest of the group was utterly paralyzed at the sight of them. It was so utterly stunning they had no idea how to respond.

"H…how did you…?" Katara advanced cautiously, if gratefully, towards Smellerbee. The girl was still laughing her head off until she opened her eyes a tiny fraction to see the Fire Nation woman standing over her. In an automatic, nervous reaction, she cried out loud and crawled back on her hands, trying to get away. Longshot, having got free of Pipsqueak's bear-hug, stood firm before Smellerbee, longbow at the ready and staring fiercely at Katara. The Waterbender saw it all happen so quickly she found herself unable to react. Thankfully, Pipsqueak laid a hand on Longshot's arrow-drawing arm.

"It's okay!" Pipsqueak cautioned the expert marksman, "they're buddies!"

"Yeah…" The Duke sat up on the ground and glared at the group, "if you want to call the Avatar's former posse 'buddies'."

"The Avatar?" Smellerbee calmed down, looking from her low vantage point on the cobbles from face to face, uncertain how to take the unrecognisable people before her, "I thought he was dead…"

"He is…" Sokka stepped forward and leaned down towards the prostrate Smellerbee, as Longshot relaxed his bow, while the Warrior sounded as calm as he could, "but it's good to see you all alive."

"But…where's Jet?" Pipsqueak asked the girl. Smellerbee, looking up at the giant, couldn't bare to look him in the eye, and stared back down again as she got herself to her feet, reaching behind herself for a single weapon. She brought round one of Jet's hooks, and held it solemnly.

"No…" The Duke looked up at the hook, the essence of Jet's being, missing its partner and lying forlorn and alone in Smellerbee's hands. It was final proof of what the others hadn't dared to reveal. Their leader, their inspiration, the one who had taken them from the depths of despair and made them men, was dead. The Duke liked to think of himself as tough, impervious, ready to take anything in his stride and carry on to the bitter end. It was this determination that had kept him going for so many months after Jet's disappearance. But this was too much. The tears came uncontrollably, and no matter what he did they kept on coming. With the sorrow came rage, and he found his arms lunging towards the Water Tribe Warrior who dared to tell him that he didn't know what happened to their leader, "_why!? Why!?_"

"It's not their fault," Smellerbee spoke mournfully towards the boy, still holding the hook, and looking down at Sokka, who had reeled backwards at The Duke's tearful lunge, and hid as best he could his aversion to the vicious cycle of emotion that seemed to be outpouring amongst these war buddies. Smellerbee's eyes turned upwards towards Katara's, who stood rooted to the spot, shuddering visibly. There were too many tears around. She already knew of Jet's fate, long before, and she had been powerless. They had all been powerless. Smellerbee said respectfully, "they did what they could. We all did what we could."

"It's never enough…" Pipsqueak murmured, sniffing quietly. The Duke tossed himself aside fitfully and faced up to all of them through the tears.

"It doesn't matter!" The Duke calmed himself down, "no matter what we do...just so long as we do it…"

Smellerbee smiled at The Duke, and stepped forward to put a hand on his shoulder, "it's what Jet would want us to do."

The Duke held up an arm to rest on Smellerbee's outstretched shoulder, and when Pipsqueak stepped forward to rest one of his giant hands on The Duke's other shoulder, this prompted Longshot to settle another hand on Pipsqueak's shoulder, completing the silent pact. The bond they seemed to share was one in which the rest of the group were outsiders. While the others were still too stunned to do anything except watch, Toph felt the need to step forward and ask the obvious question, "how did you get here!?"

Smellerbee looked up at Toph, still laying an arm on The Duke's shoulder, and smiled, "we escaped the Dai Li. Jet taught us more tricks than he let them know."

Smellerbee and Longshot exchanged devious glances. Even here, in the gaping maw of defeat, they were still utterly defiant, completely resourceful. Sokka, getting the thrust of Toph's question, got up and brushed his feet off, asking, "okay, but how did you get _here _specifically?"

"This was the area we came from," Smellerbee related, taking her hand off of the small boy's shoulder and turning to face the Warrior, "Longshot and I just walked here. We didn't really know where we were going, but somehow, we managed to find you."

Smellerbee's answer was directed towards the Freedom Fighters, further coalescing the internal bond they shared, much to Sokka's annoyance, having seen the results of this chummy bonding technique firsthand. Katara haltingly stepped forward, feeling immensely apologetic, but staying her tongue.

"But what are you guys doing!?" Smellerbee asked happily, over the moon to see her friends again, and Sokka felt it necessary to remind them of their task.

"We are conducting an operation for Yuung, an Earth Kingdom Colonel still fighting against the Fire Nation," Sokka crossed his arms, "we're infiltrating the Firebender's home islands in order to gather information that might just help us end this war."

"Heh…we're doing much more than that…" The Duke smiled the widest smile Sokka had ever seen on him. The Warrior's arms fell to his sides as that devious, vicious smile etched on The Duke's face and in Sokka's mind. The hapless melodrama surrounding Jet's death seemed to have disappeared in the boy's mind, such that Sokka was coming over a grim realisation of why he wanted them all to stay so far away from Madame Norigae's tailor shop. Why he spent so long in that side-room. Why now, consumed with grief, all that seemed to magically vanish from his face, and he said to them all, "it should be around about now, just look down there."

The Freedom Fighters turned their attention downward, and while the others were looking down in confusion, as Katara was too confused in her desperate need to compensate for her attitude towards Jet before his death, as Toph was unaware of what kind of people these kids were, and as Aang was so distanced from the minds of others, unable to comprehend what would drive these people, Sokka understood perfectly what was going to happen. The horrifying reality set in of what they had been expected to do, and what they had been partaking in. Colonel Yuung's entire strategy became agonisingly clear, and the expectant, wondering faces of those fighters for the desert they called Freedom, Sokka could see what they were doing. They were following in Jet's footsteps in the worst way possible.

He could see the small ticking device in Madame Norigae's shop, planted there while everyone was distracted by haggling talk, ticking its way slowly towards detonation. Norigae would be absorbed in looking over the haul she had collected and attempted to convert. Ziya may have just returned. A couple of customers might have wondered in, curious as to what she was working on, briefly pausing, she pauses to wave to Ziya, just outside. A chemical reaction silently occurs in the side-room, and a pulse of sheer kinetic force bursts in all directions. A wall of fire pulverises the Colonel's and Commander's outfits and their dummies against the wall, breaking a seam through the wooden separation between the two rooms and catching the customers in the searing carpet of heat passing through the room. Norigae's hand is charred, and the flames burst upwards. Ziya holds an arm up to protect her eyes, and is blown back by the blast. Norigae collapses to the ground, unable to breath through the fumes. A daughter cries out in pain, and to her mother trapped inside, and the walls crash in on the tailor's shop.

The booming sound reverberating off the rooftops sounded at first like the clouds overhead finally coalescing together into a storm. But Toph knew better, and gasped loudly. Realisation for the others seeped in only as they saw the slowly rising pillar of black smoke from near the docks. Sokka knew the whole time. And he couldn't do a single thing about it.

"_All-right!_" Smellerbee shouted in overjoyed excitement, pumping the air with her fist from the adrenaline, "the Freedom Fighters are back in business!"

"Now we're together again, the Fire Nation doesn't stand a chance," The Duke spoke with immense satisfaction. All the Freedom Fighters grasped each other's shoulders, looking out over the rising smoke and the murmur from down the street, looking back over past times.

Everyone else looked on, horrified. They had been accomplices to murder, sanctioned by the man they were purporting to serve, towards an innocent who didn't deserve the fate someone far away had in store for them. They had more pain in the world, Aang realised, and the gash that wounded the earth just got that much larger. The pillar of black smoke ran from the Fire Nation city of Ryojun to the clouds above, cutting the sky in two, and sucking all the world inside.

**To Be Continued…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thank you for all your responses to the question I posed, and thanks for continuing to read this fic and support it. I'm very grateful for that. Unfortunately...I won't be able to continue updating nearly as regularly as I have been doing (ie: once every two days, which definitely isn't bad considering the mammoth size of the portions I'm writing. Entirely accidental, I assure you). I say this because I've recently run into something of a brick wall regarding my university studies. I physically cannot concentrate on what I need to do for Uni and write silly little fan-fics simultaneously. I'm very, very sorry, but you know those life crises that afflict fan writers and artists that lead them to not update a single thing for weeks? Yeah, I'm approaching one of those right now. I worked on an essay outline for one of my tutors and it went _terribly_. I need to work on this...as in put in complete, total 100 effort.

Honestly, it's worse than high school. You end up grounding _yourself _for a month.

I've chosen this juncture since it's pretty much the closure of the Ryojun arc. You can tell from certain descriptions in this part that I'm a military historian at heart. And if this chapter seems a tad rough (you could tell I was suffering an attack of gagging through the Freedom Fighter's 'tearful' reunion), these worries are the reason why. I'll try to continue it when things are a little less hectic, but I can't promise any timetables. All I want is your understanding. And thank you all for being such a wonderful audience.

May the random occurrences of Quantum Probability prove fortunate towards your daily lives! Ross Hopkins signing off, for now.


	8. Bing Fa

The rain never really fell as they returned to the Yalujiang Strip from the Fire colony. It always threatened to, but the storm remained in check. The conversation between the group remained in much the same way, and when Toph had opened to doorway beneath the Yalujiang leading them back into the refugee camp close to nightfall, they returned as two separate groups, numbering four each, in spite of their proximity. They had given their debriefing, and The Duke and Pipsqueak persuaded the irregulars guarding the passage that Smellerbee and Longshot could be trusted. Having gained entrance, the Freedom Fighters happily showed each other around the compound, while the rest of the group remained in the opening cavern, deadened in silence, waiting for Colonel Yuung to arrive from wherever he was at that moment.

Sokka rested on the wall with his arms crossed and one of his feet resting against the rock, looking at the ground sternly and contemplatively. They had acquired access to the Fire Nation, and if they just kept low they would be out and about in no time flat. But two things bugged him. Firstly the convenience of Smellerbee and Longshot 'escaping' the Dai Li. He'd witnessed first-hand their capabilities, and knew they were more than capable of using the two Freedom Fighters as plants. He was even more certain, however, that his word would never be listened to. The second thing that bugged him was much closer to the bone: he was ingratiating himself with an organisation that killed innocents. He knew Yuung couldn't be trusted. But now they had all signed away their freedom of action to him. They couldn't challenge him or stop him. But there was always the possibility that the Freedom Fighters had simply been too zealous. It was that possibility he hoped for.

The others were consumed in thought, each in their own way. Katara was leaning back against the wall opposite Sokka's, while Aang sat up against the wall close to her. Toph was lying on the ground with her arms behind her head and her face to the ceiling. In the atmosphere thick with silence, there drifted young, exuberant voices. The war-painted girl laughed hysterically as the Freedom Fighters approached, gasping, "Pipsqueak'll eat anything, won't he!?"

"It just looked so delicious!" Pipsqueak whined from the tunnel, which had grown yellow with torchlight as Jet's protégés approached. They entered together, side-by-side, practically falling over themselves. Katara couldn't stop herself smiling at the mirth.

"Care to share?" Katara asked, turning towards the Freedom Fighters. The Duke paused, much of his mirth disappearing, as Katara had directed that question, but Smellerbee was unfazed and continued smiling broadly.

"They was just telling me…" Smellerbee wiped a laughter-induced tear away, "how they came across the chemicals they used in that bomb. Pipsqueak thought it was _juice_."

"Hey, it smelt like juice!" the giant defended himself, arm wrapped around Longshot's smiling stick-thin figure. Katara's face fell at this description, and looked away, deeply troubled. The Duke continued his constant glare, half-hidden under his rediscovered helmet and cloak, while Smellerbee's smile remained, concentrated as it was on her friends. Sokka's stern face didn't budge as he looked up at the small gang of idiots he had associated himself with.

As he stared, Smellerbee noticed, and looking from face to face her smile faded, incredulity taking over. She addressed the group in sarcastic tones, "what? You don't like winning? No wonder you've got your butts kicked so much."

"What we did was wrong," Sokka stated with absolute certainty, earning an angry riposte from the pike-wielding Duke.

"Sheesh, I'm sorry about your _clothes_ getting all sooty, you big wuss," The Duke responded to Sokka's accusation badly.

"It's not about the clothes!" Sokka snapped back angrily. Toph leaned her head up at this juncture of the conversation.

"Can it at least be _partially _about the clothes?" Toph pointed a finger upward. As shocked as she was at The Duke's actions, she was still annoyed at losing her 'Blind Bandit' outfit. Sokka huffed in frustration, leaning off the wall and holding his hands out towards the Freedom Fighters.

"_Okay_, the clothes are a part of it, but…but…_you killed someone_!" Sokka yelled.

The Duke sniffed up a wad of errant snot, clearly unperturbed, "well…I was hoping to kill more than _one_."

"_That's bad!_" Sokka waved his arms about like a man possessed, trying to get the message through to the granite-minded little brat.

"She was Fire Nation," The Duke offered as a catch-all excuse, "what do you care?"

"I don't believe this…" Sokka's arms fell limply at his sides, "we went through this same argument _five months ago_. It's a very simple, straightforward thing to comprehend. Killing innocents equals _bad_. Which part of that don't you get!?"

"She wasn't an innocent!" The Duke yelled back at Sokka, "you heard her! She made uniforms for the Fire Nation! Those things you gave her were 'contributions to the war effort'! We couldn't let her get away with that!"

"Hey, yeah!" Pipsqueak decided, belatedly, to shore up The Duke's position, "Colonel Yuung told us to disrupt the Fire Nation any way we could. To undercut them and get them to leave the Earth Kingdom. She was helping them stay here, living on our land. She was an enemy!"

"Being an enemy and making _fine embroidery _for the enemy are two _entirely _separate things," Sokka crossed his arms again and looked as stern as he could manage, "and if your job was to disrupt the Fire Nation I don't think the Colonel's going to be too happy that you only got a _tailor's shop _for your effort."

"Good work, soldiers!" came the gruff, but pleased voice from the tunnel the Freedom Fighters had appeared from. Everyone turned and silenced their disagreements as Colonel Yuung emerged into the cavern, his presence seemingly filling the empty space with pure charisma. His smile was slight but genuine, looking from face to face as they turned towards him. He addressed them all in turn, "you managed to secure funds, identification and passage to the Fire Nation, picked up two new members for our growing forces, and ensured that a good few Fire Nation troops are going to drop dead from frostbite in the coming months. You have all _excelled _yourselves! Display this level of resourcefulness in the Fire Nation itself and we're going to have Ozai himself on his knees begging us to stop."

"We'll have those Fire colonists _swimming _back to their stinking islands, sir!" The Duke gleamed triumphantly, and the way Yuung smiled back confirmed in Sokka's mind that this man would be the death of them all. Yuung snapped his attention to Sokka, and the Water Warrior was forced to soften his sternness. They still needed to get to the Fire Nation, and when they got there they'd drop this maniac faster than they could blink.

"Is your team ready, Sokka?" Yuung asked authoritatively and seriously, "once you get to the Fire Nation, there's no going back, understand?"

"Perfectly, sir," Sokka stilled his tongue of concerns, "we're more than ready to do our duty."

"Uh…sir?" Katara stepped forward reluctantly, hands clasped uneasily together, unsure of what to say, "there's something I've been wanting to ask…"

Yuung, facing Katara, shot a brief glance at Sokka to indicate that his team didn't look very ready to him. Sokka looked from Yuung to Katara, who wasn't looking at any of them, and wished her not to do anything stupid to jeopardise their chances. Yuung stood uncertainly before the slender Waterbending Master, "ask away, but be quick about it."

"It's just…it's about a Fire Soldier that might have been taken prisoner," Katara looked up to steady herself, "his name is Muzen. I was just wondering…"

"Why are you asking about a Fire Nation Soldier?" Yuung asked with a large dose of scepticism.

"I feel it might be useful to our mission," Katara lied. Toph leaned up off the ground to look at Katara and wondered what on earth she could've been up to. Katara continued, "he was part of a Fire Nation patrol that went missing a week ago. Was he captured?"

Yuung, regarding Katara suspiciously, thought back a week ago, "we did capture a group of Fire Nation soldiers last week. We capture them all the _time_. Why is his fate so important?"

"There may be some disinformation at work," Katara stilled her raw nerves, trying to sound as distanced from her enquiry as possible, "there was talk of a ransom."

"That's disinformation alright," Yuung elaborated, "we opened up the possibility of a prisoner exchange. Even though the war's over they've only released two-thirds of their prisoners-of-war. The other third is what I'm interested in."

"You mean…!" Sokka surged forward to interrupt, and calmed himself down forcefully, "sir, I've reason to believe the Kyoshi Warriors are among those captured and unreleased."

"Sokka…" Katara turned to her brother and exclaimed, while Yuung shrugged forcefully at Sokka.

"Half my former garrison at Omashu hasn't been released. Beyond that, I've no idea and quite frankly I'm not in the mood to care so long as I get soldiers," Yuung turned back to Katara, "if these soldiers are so dangerous that the Fire Nation is afraid of them, to the extent that they even have to deny their existence, then they're worth trading with the enemy for…if they would actually admit they're _missing_, at least."

"What do you mean…?" Katara addressed Yuung again, eager to get to the bottom of Muzen's fate.

"We did capture a group a week ago, two dozen at least, and gave word to the Fire Nation that if they didn't offer up someone in return, they'd never see their precious soldiers ever again," Yuung stated, "but you know what they did? They claimed they _didn't have_ any soldiers missing. Or even that they had any soldiers to exchange. So we tried to get the names off of the prisoners, but they refused to co-operate."

"Well, one of them might be Muzen," Katara shrugged, "see, sir? That's useful information."

"Sure, _might _be, but we'll never know now," Yuung casually remarked off into the air, the implication descending like a fog that had been drifting around the edges of their vision for all this time. Up above their heads the first individual patters of rain echoed through the ceiling into the stony cavern, and Yuung continued, unaware that he had revealed anything profound, "the Fire Nation didn't deserve those people back. Such a callous disregard for their soldiers…well…what could any of us expect? They're Fire Nation. No better than bloodthirsty scum."

Katara's heart was beating its way out of her chest, and only the gentle patter at the beginning of drizzle reverberating around the dry cavern and the flicker of torchlight filled the silent air. She remembered how the captain of the Fire Nation patrol they'd witnessed the capture of stared at Yuung. In sheer terror. She said without energy, without strength, and with utter surrender, "…you killed them."

Yuung stared down harshly at Katara, fierce and angry at the presumption that they were ever really alive. He stood up to his full height, towering over Katara's slight stature with arms on hips, a strident titan of war-like masculinity, "what did you expect us to do with them!? Give the murderers free food and accommodation when we don't even have enough for ourselves? Let them go and wish them better luck next time? They're useful to me in only two ways: as currency or as corpses. If they can't be one, they have to be the other. I can't let my operation be compromised by the sycophantic, sentimental urges of a soppy, Waterbending _woman_ who cares more for worthless pond scum than the people you profess to serve. If you leave any trace of your feminine weakness in you, then you're _useless_ to me! If you want to serve these people, to be a soldier for them, you must be prepared to follow this cause to the bitter end! To obey it! Die for it! _Kill _for it! _Do you understand you stupid little girl!?_"

Katara's vision turned red at the calm, towering man with the raging voice looking condescendingly down at her. Sokka, at the corner of her peripheral vision frantically waved at her to not do anything stupid. He himself had disciplined many people this way, and his mindset was unaffected by the shift in tone. He had crossed his arms to assert himself, and felt secure. He might have expected some weak, feminine slap. What he didn't expect was one of the _meanest _right hooks he'd ever taken in his long military career. The Colonel staggered back, nursing his bruised cheek, while The Duke had rushed forward to point his pike square at Katara's heaving chest. She had felt this rage before, all too often, but rarely had she expressed it so forcefully. Yuung, eyes winced in pain, held out a hand to lower The Duke's pike. While the boy looked aside in momentary confusion, he quickly snapped to attention in recognition of the Colonel's wishes.

Colonel Yuung stood up straight and collected his dignity, despite the red gash on his cheek, looking calmly towards Sokka, whose shaking head was emerging from his hand in exasperation, and ordering in his low, gruff voice, "you'd better get your team back into their old clothes."

"But…sir! Our clothes were destroyed along with Madame Norigae's tailor shop!" Sokka stood to terrified attention.

"Well you should have thought of that before letting your sister punch me in the face," Yuung marched over to Sokka and held out his hand, "give me your Fire Nation identification. I'm taking you all off this mission."

"What did I do!?" Toph exclaimed as she jumped to her feet, shocked and angry at Yuung's decision.

"Nothing, but your attitude stinks," Yuung dismissed Toph without looking at her, but Toph was not one to be defeated by one man's obstinacy.

"But we know someone in the Fire Nation who can help us!" Toph attempted one final trump card, "General Iroh's on the run! We've met him before, we can bring him to our cause!"

"Our cause is to drive the Fire Nation into the sea," Yuung snapped at the blind Earthbender, "is the Dragon of the West going to stand for that? Is the brother of the Fire Lord really going to aid us in destroying his worthless race of savages? And then why _are _you so incredibly _chummy _with one of the most dangerous Firebenders ever to crawl his scummy way onto the surface of this world?"

Toph remained silent, fuming in rage along with Katara at the bull-headed tyrant. Yuung took this as evidence of his moral superiority.

"His loyalties are uncertain, and an uncertain loyalty is worse than no loyalty at all." The Colonel turned to Sokka as if directing his comments directly at the Warrior, "I must have complete, unconditional loyalty from everyone who fights for me or the people will never be free of the Firebenders. I never thought I'd see the day when a Fire Nation brat would prove more trustworthy than the Avatar's companions. Now hand over the bag, _Water Tribe_."

Sokka felt entitled to glare at Yuung as he slowly took his bag off of his shoulder and thrust it sullenly into the Colonel's hand. Yuung, never one to take a bitter attitude softly, stared back angrily.

"If you're not prepared to do what it takes to defeat the Fire Nation, then I can't use you," Yuung remarked coldly, "without the Avatar, you're worthless. Get some civilian clothes and get out of my base."

Yuung swiftly turned to Katara, still breathing harshly in concentrated anger, and made a stern face to ward off anything the Waterbending Master may have planned. He turned away from all of them and marched down the tunnel, Sokka's bag in hand, temporarily dimming the torchlight as he entered and disappeared. Smellerbee was looking analytically at Sokka the whole time, gauging all of their exchanges. Pipsqueak, who was the closest of the Freedom Fighters to actually considering the Avatar's former companions to be anything resembling pals, spoke up first, "uh…sorry to see you go."

"I'm not sorry to see the back of that big jerk," Toph remarked, turning her face away to hide her disappointment.

"Don't you _dare _say that about the Colonel!" The Duke spat at the Earthbending Master, "he's a hero to all of us…!"

"Open your eyes you idiot!" Sokka snapped, "he's not a _hero_! He lets children and old men do his dirty work planting bombs in tailor shops! There's a name for people who do that, and it's definitely not hero. He's a coward, and no amount of swaggering around is going to change that."

"I'd like to see you do any better," Smellerbee spoke calmly at long last.

"I _have_, actually!" Sokka countered.

"So why is the Avatar dead, then?" Smellerbee targeted. Sokka could only fume in response, his eyes briefly snapping to Aang. The Duke caught the movement in his eyes and did a double-take. He was wondering why when Smellerbee mentioned the Avatar the Warrior's eyes immediately swivelled to Kazuki. Katara had calmed down since her outburst, but still stood solemnly.

"There was so much pain in her life…why did we have to cause more?" Katara voiced her opinion, attracting Smellerbee's attention.

"Because if it didn't happen to her, it would have happened to one of us," Smellerbee stated with utter logic, "you don't get it. So some pretty Fire Nation girl has a convincing sob story. Why not climb up into the refugee camp and ask some pretty girl up there? Each and every one's got a _hundred _sob stories to tell and they all start the same way. 'They killed my mother'. 'They killed my father'. 'They killed my son'. 'They killed my daughter'. 'They killed my brothers and sisters'. 'They killed my uncles and aunties'. 'They killed my cousins, nephews and nieces'. 'They killed my husband'. 'They killed my wife'. 'They killed my best friend'. 'They killed my buddy from work'. 'They killed my next door neighbour who gave me apples every morning'. 'They killed that cute guy I had a crush on when I was nine'. I grew up in these camps, scraped along a meagre existence as best I could, knowing that the grumbling in my stomach and the sicknesses that struck down those close to me, one by one, were all the Fire Nation's fault. These people say they've grown up here, happy fourth generation Fire Nation families! They say they just want to be left in peace! They have their peace on _our land_. They've lived their happy four generations in _our Kingdom_. _They never had the right to cause us this much pain_!"

"So that makes it alright to kill them all, right?" Sokka shot back, the smattering of rain setting his nerves on edge, "no matter what they do themselves, just because they're Fire Nation, that makes it alright to hurt and murder and make their lives miserable? Even if they're perfectly innocent?"

"There's no such thing as _innocence _with the Fire Nation," Smellerbee uttered in a low, spiteful voice, "they're mobilised for total war. _Every single Fire Nation citizen _is a part of this. Everything they do, they do for the war. Every shop they run, every factory they work in, every field they plow, _all of it _is used to sustain their conquest and killing. And that's _our land _they're using to wage war. Their people are using _our _food, _our _water, _our _homes and _our _wealth, to wage _their _war against us. They never showed any mercy towards us, so why should we show mercy towards them?"

"Because we're not demons! It's not the warrior's way!" Sokka couldn't bear to hear it any longer, "we have rules and honour and a way of fighting that doesn't turn us into monsters! If we sink to their level we're no better than they are!"

"The 'warrior's way'?" Smellerbee regarded Sokka as a hopelessly naïve nunce, "honour is a luxury you can indulge in when you're _winning_. We don't have that luxury. Heck, we haven't had that luxury for a hundred years! We fought with honour and rules of conduct and 'warriors' for the last century, and all we have to show for our efforts is a victorious Fire Nation, the Dai Li selling us out and one dead Avatar. We have _nothing_. The only way we can fight _at all_ is to avoid the Fire Soldiers at all costs and hit their weakest, most vulnerable targets _hard _and _constantly_. But you want us to get ourselves in some 'honourable' suicide attack against the cream of the Fire Nation military because…what? We want to look nice? This isn't a popularity contest! _This is war! _A fight to the end where we either win or die. When the stakes are that high, you can't _afford _to be nice, because the enemy will exploit it and kill the lot of you without making a _dent _on the Fire Nation's ability to fight! Do you know what that means?"

"Go on, genius, tell me what that means," Sokka dared Smellerbee.

"That means Jet was right!" Smellerbee dropped the big one, "Jet was right the whole time and we were too stuck up and moralistic to admit it! We're not going to win by being big, stupid, _honourable _warriors charging the flames and getting ourselves killed! The Fire Nation is winning because they _are _monsters. We need to be even more monstrous than them to stand a chance of protecting these people."

"It's better to die a human being than to win over the dead bodies of the weak and innocent," Sokka stated as a plain fact.

"Oh yeah?" Smellerbee calmed down from her frantic heights, and pointed up towards the pattering ceiling, "I dare you to tell _them _the same thing."

Longshot placed a hand on Smellerbee's shoulder, and the angry girl switched her attention to look long and attentively into the tall, slender marksman's eyes. Sokka, staring at the two of them, thought he saw for a strange second something happen to Smellerbee's irises, and it seemed like all her anger disappeared. She turned back to everyone.

"There's something we need to do," she explained briefly, "I'll see you later."

Longshot and Smellerbee walked steadily out of the tunnel. The Duke had been greatly enjoying the onslaught against the high-minded 'warrior', and remained to soak in the nervous atmosphere. But after a while, he couldn't stand looking at that hypocritical face of Sokka's, and turned away to walk down the tunnel, "I'm going too. The air's getting _stale _in here. C'mon Pipsqueak."

"Huh?" muttered the distracted titan, transfixed at the argument going on and lost in his own thoughts. These things were too big for him to think about, and he shook his thoughts loose to follow The Duke, "okay, I'm coming."

Once the Freedom Fighters had all left, there was no sound but the patter of the rain above the dray cavern. They had all been thwacked in the face by the scale of their task, and needed time to absorb it. Aang heaved a large sigh, staring down at the dust on the ground, swept aside by various footprints. Toph could sense all the little individual particles, where people came and went, the living, breathing people around them, and for one of the rare moments of her life actually contemplated things, "I came along because I wanted to fight…I never wanted to kill anyone."

"I can't accept this…any of it…we have to be better than this…" Katara mumbled, still breathing heavily. Aang looked at the patterns in the dust, and thought about the state of things.

"We are better than this…we all are…but war doesn't bring out the best of us," Aang spoke, "and after a hundred years there isn't much good left to salvage."

"We can't think like that," Sokka decided determinedly, "we can't let all the lives that have been lost up until now be in vain."

"Those lives shouldn't have been lost in the first place…" Aang held his palms against the wall, beginning to lever himself up.

"You can't blame yourself for this…" Katara asserted, knowing where Aang's thoughts were leading.

"It's not about whose fault is whose, there's too much of that as it is," Aang stood to his full, short height and looked at Katara, "it's just that I'm starting to realise that ending a war is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. There's so much hatred, and then there's hatred piled upon hatred. Even if we defeated the Fire Lord tomorrow, what's that going to change?"

"Well for one thing he won't use a great big fiery chunk of celestial rock to kill us all," Sokka pointed out with a shrug, "that's a _start_. If we can stop the Fire Nation, we can build the peace."

"I don't think that's enough, Sokka," Aang turned to the Warrior, "what would have happened if the Earth King was still in power, and we managed to invade on the Day of Black Sun? Nothing would change _here_. These people have lived their whole lives here, unable to budge, at each others throats. Everything's out of balance, and people are dying, even now, because of that. We need to restore the balance, and that's going to take more work than just defeating the Fire Lord."

"Sure it is," Sokka looked at the matter realistically, "but that work's gonna be a heck of a lot easier if we get to the Fire Nation ourselves, ditch that maniac and find Iroh before the Fire Nation does."

"But Yuung took our money and our ID," Katara discussed, "and even if we get it back, he's just going to send his men after us. He knows where we'll be going."

"He can't cause a scene in the middle of a Fire Nation port," Sokka reasoned, "and even if he did, we've handled worse scrapes than _this_. We'll just have to be careful."

"Since when have we ever been _careful_?" Katara continued to discuss, but Aang was slowly drifting away from the conversation. They were discussing the practicalities of their immediate task, but there was something even more immediate all around them that he was supposed, by fate, to tackle. He was singularly incapable of doing so, and that impotence in the face of genocidal obstinance was what caused this war in the first place. His friends didn't seem to appreciate the enormity of it, of the world's wounds, its slow death by a thousand cuts that was only getting worse.

It was that strange feeling again, of others drifting away. Of the world, with its many problems and contradictions, becoming dim and distant to him, a morass incapable of being understood. Katara had turned away from him and towards Sokka to discuss things, and the constant attention that she had given him since he emerged from his brief 'death' had given way. She had other concerns, and it was only natural that she would, with the possibility of going to the Fire Nation, her internal conflicts were becoming starkly external, and it was in these conflicts that she was challenging and facing with all her energy. Her wonderful, determined, compassionate energy that she directed towards all that she cared about. But that meant it wasn't being directed at him. It all seemed so clear to him.

Aang felt that he needed some air, even though all the tunnels were just as stuffy and underground as everywhere else in the compound. Maybe he just felt like moving, but after a while he realised he was just looking for reasons to get away. To get away from all of it. He excused himself silently, as Katara and Sokka were deep in discussion, and wandered down an adjoining tunnel, to where he didn't especially care. The voices of his friends diminished the further he went, and the tunnels near the edges of the compound at this point of night, with the storm brewing above, were largely empty. There was nothing for Aang to associate with except the flicker of torch-light. After long wandering, he paused.

He felt like drifting away more than ever, and his vision seemed to blur. He wasn't of any use here, in this chasm of despair that had opened up between the nations. The things connecting him to this place were vanishing, one by one, as whatever was happening, things seemed to be heading towards some conclusion, one way or another. As Aang's vision seemed to disappear, he could see something distant, something bright, a place filled with joyous laughter where he could disappear into the greater whole. His sense of balance failed, and somewhere far away he felt himself falling, only for his senses to be brought back into sharp, absolute focus by the constant force of someone else pushing him back upright. The world came back to him as he blinked, surfaces became textured, and he turned to see that the short person leaning him up by the shoulder was none other than a deeply irritated Toph.

"C'mon, twinkle-toes, what's the matter with you!?" Toph directed at the woozy former Airbender, "we didn't drag your rotten carcass from one end of the Earth Kingdom to the other just so you could fall into a coma again."

"Sorry, I…I just felt a little woozy," Aang held a hand up to his head in dizziness while Toph stood more fully upright, holding Aang's arm around her neck to keep the boy from falling over. Aang remarked with growing strength in his weak-sounding vocal chords, "I'll get over it in a sec, but…but…h…how…what are _you _doing here?"

"Your heartbeat was getting all _funny_," Toph made a wavy motion with her fingers to illustrate the point, "you've been doing that a lot, lately. Now, you're not going to suddenly keel over when I let you go, right?"

"No, I…" Aang inspected his own sense of balance, and found almost to his astonishment that he was completely aware, "…I feel fine. I'm…I feel much better now."

"Good," Toph took her shoulders out from underneath Aang's limp arm and stood away, leaving Aang to stand on her own two feet. She stepped to the side like she'd touched something disgusting, "just the thought of some half-dead weakling having to _rely _on me makes me shudder."

Aang looked at Toph weirdly. Something about her attitude disturbed his much-improved analytical faculties, "why are you insulting me so much?"

"Because whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," Toph shrugged conversationally, "so everything except direct lightning strikes counts as positive experiences in your case."

"That…makes no sense…" Aang cocked an eyebrow, "if someone were to shear my _legs_ off I definitely wouldn't be better off for it."

"You can be surprised. Look what I've managed without eyes," Toph smiled, consciously looking away from Aang but still holding him at the centre of her attention, "and you can manage without your bending abilities, too, if you just stopped being so damned self-absorbed and concentrate on what's in front of you. Your head's so far away from everyone else that you're starting to take the rest of us for granted."

"No I'm not, I'm…" Aang considered his own seeming urge to drift away, and in the context of Toph's words it struck even him as selfish. When his positivity was taken away it rendered in stark contrast how much of a brat he really was, "huh…I guess I am. But…I _have _to rely on all of you. I can't do this by myself."

"Lesson for the day: It's perfectly all-right to use others' generosity for personal gain, like how I use Momo, for example," Toph closed her non-seeing eyes in order to look authoritative, "but you should never let that develop into a crutch. Once that happens, you're just a waste of space."

Aang considered Toph's words carefully, mulling them over in his head, before coming to a definitive decision about them, communicating it derisively towards the blind Earthbending Master, "that's a _terrible _lesson."

"Well…it sounded better when I was taught it," Toph considered, "besides, I'm your Earthbending teacher, not a friggin' life coach. You got sugar queen for that kind of schmaltzy heart-to-heart clap-trap."

Aang couldn't help it. He smiled deviously at Toph's combative and stubborn defence of herself, "who taught you that?"

"Same guy who's going to teach _you_ once we get our butts moving," Toph began walking down the tunnel back towards Katara and Sokka, and Aang dutifully followed, still smiling in good, earth-bound humour. Toph talked ahead of them both, "from the sounds of it, to get our stuff back, we're going to need your scrawny little limbs. So, contrary to all expectations, it looks like you're gonna be useful after a-"

Toph stopped abruptly, and held a hand out to halt Aang, walking alongside her. She waited and listened intently, concentrating on some small thing that seemed wrong and out of place. She turned towards an adjoining tunnel they were walking past, and with grim determination pushed Aang towards an indentation in the wall, as Aang began to hear footsteps echoing down the tunnel. While momentarily perturbed by being squished against a stone wall, he managed to peer around the edge, hidden from the entrance of the adjoining tunnel, to see Smellerbee and Longshot emerging.

The two Freedom Fighters were silent and looked purposeful, showing an uncanny appreciation of the layout of the place as the slim girl with Jet's hook slung around her back stepped up onto a ladder leading up to the camp above, with Longshot following from behind her. It was still audibly raining up above, and as far the two people hiding knew it was far too soon for the two of them to be trusted enough to have any missions assigned to them. The Freedom Fighters looked…empty-faced, somehow, as Smellerbee's near-permanent scowl was nowhere to be seen. Their whole demeanour seemed to indicate that they had a specific destination planned.

"Where do you think they're going?" Toph whispered to Aang, confident that the two wouldn't hear them. Aang had no idea himself. But they both knew only too well what happened to the previous owner of the hook Smellerbee was wielding. Something was wrong, and knowing their strand luck it was likely to be even worse than they thought it would be.

From a distance, the two red-clad 12-year-olds surreptitiously began to follow the suspicious former prisoners of the Dai Li up into the cold, wet weather above ground, the physical manifestation of pure misery that was the Yalujiang Strip given two more characteristics that made it even more haunting: rain, and _expectation_.

**To Be Continued…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06


	9. Jiuye

The residents of the refugee camp didn't seem to know the difference between rain and dryness, going by the evidence of how crowded the corners of the alleyways were in spite of the sludgy mess the ground had turned into. The refugees still huddled in the same places, and the kids still played in the middle of the roads, oblivious to the sun having long gone down. There was still torch-light, protected from the rain by their own little shelters, so the children still had light with which to play with, and didn't seem to mind the curtain of water that descended upon them and slicked their hair to their heads. They didn't seem to care, and neither did anyone else. They existed suspended in time, with no moment being any different from the rest, as if refusing to acknowledge its passing somehow made it more likely that the last hundred years never happened.

What had beneath the ground been a mere patter was up here a constant hammering of the ground with drops of rain. The lack of solidity and constant rumble of the ground beneath their sodden feet was making Toph's task of tracking Smellerbee and Longshot that much more difficult. Fortunately, the torrential downpour meant that Aang could use his eyes to see further into the distance and be reasonably sure the two of them weren't staring back. Not that it made their self-declared mission any easier, however, since Aang had to halt frequently to make sure the mud didn't claim his sandals for itself and keep them as a trophy. Toph didn't have any such problems with footwear, but the feeling of her contact with the outside of the world sinking into the bowels of the soggy earth was as far from pleasant as she could imagine. It was making things hard to sense, so she frequently laid a hand on the solid stone of the huts to keep herself walking straight.

The two 'Freedom Fighters' didn't seem to be looking behind them, or any of the other hallmarks of suspicious activity…but it was still highly unnerving. They seemed to know their way round the place, after only a brief introduction to it, and didn't share the merest bit of conversation in all the time the two had been following them. Aang didn't even know what he was doing, following people around crowded, rain-drenched hovels, but there was just too much _wrong _with this whole development to simply ignore it. Feet splashing in the mud as they trotted from corner to corner looking at the short glimpses of Longshot's hat and Smellerbee's messy headgear, Aang was engrossed enough in looking around corners and his own idle speculations that he didn't pay sufficient heed to the small plume of mud that jutted out in front of him. Brought back perilously to the present, his right sandal slid forward and his left sandal flew up in the air as he waved his arms in a concerted attempt to regain his balance. What would have been child's play for the Airbender he had been slightly more than a fortnight ago turned out to be impossible as his surprised face embedded itself in the soggy muck. Feeling wet, grimy and quite the idiot, he turned over and spat some mud out of his mouth, wiping the grime out of his eyes only to see a hefty projectile of yet more mud splat in his face.

"You big bully!" a small girl shouted poutily at Aang as the supposed master of all four elements spent some time wiping down his skin with what water he could collect in his hands, while his behind was sinking into the alley and his red clothes were rapidly turning a fertile shade of brown. Toph made a cruel giggle at Aang's expense.

"You know…theoretically speaking…if you were, say, the _saviour of the world_ I wouldn't be very impressed that you can't even let little kids build mud-men in peace," Aang snooked an angry squint at the red-clothed Earthbender, standing assertively with hands on hips and not even making any pretense to help the one-sandaled boy to his feet. He had to blink continuously because of the irritating and perplexing way the rain cascaded down Aang's hair and across his face. His short crop of dark brown hair irritated him, the mud encasing his skin irritated him, and _she _irritated him most of all. He pushed himself to his feet as strongly as he could, kicking mud out from underneath him as he trawled through the mud slowly, looking for his other sandal. Once he found it, he leant over and snapped it up, glancing over at Toph as he leant back up. The Earthbending Master could tell from his movements how annoyed he was, and that made her all the happier, "fate knows what the world would have been like under your _divine guidance_…"

"You'll be first to find out unless you shut up…_theoretically speaking_…" Aang walked past Toph to pick up Smellerbee and Longshot's trail, wiping himself off as he staggered through the river of muck forming underneath their feet. Toph was too full of herself to put much notice into Aang's sudden change of temperament, but she was satisfied with her lot. The mud-covered girl in rags squinted at them as they left, waiting until they were well away before leaning down to re-assemble her mud pile.

"Don't worry Mr. Muddy, I'll get you back into shape in no ti- AGH!" the girl threw aside the handful of mud she had scooped up and blew on her fingers. Utterly perplexed, she looked purposefully at the patch of ground she had scooped the mud from…it was some stray debris from the mud that red-clothed spy-boy had slapped aside when he got up. With wide-eyed wonderment she witnessed bubbles popping on the surface of the soggy dirt, and rain-drops sizzling into vapour as they made contact with the disturbed ground.

* * *

They'd lost them. They couldn't have kept track of a hippo-phant unless it was tied down with lead weights. Heck, they'd lost _Appa _before, so it wasn't as if they'd established much of a track record in expert tracking. The two of them were walking down the backs of houses, trying not to trip over the scattered remains of humanity clustered in the narrow passageways that almost mockingly served as streets in this place. They were close to losing _themselves _at this juncture.

"I don't think they came down this way, Kazuki," Toph finally decided to air her opinion amongst these rag-dressed remnants, and halted some distance behind the short-haired boy, who was still glancing from alley to alley in search of the two Freedom Fighters.

"I think I saw 'em a few moments ago…maybe if we asked for directions…" Aang carried forward a few steps in determination, still searching furtively.

"Listen, there has to be a good reason why we're out here getting soaked to the skin…and potentially pneumonia…but I'm coming up with nuthin'," Toph crossed her arms, "so Smellerbee and Longshot are making strange wanderings in the middle of the night, I don't see why that should concern us."

Aang stopped and turned back to the blind girl, wondering himself if this was simply paranoia on his part. It wasn't like him to go suspecting people like this, and they did have more important things to do, but, "but…what if it's something serious?"

"If it's something serious, then the best bet against it _not _getting serious is if we skidaddle from this slag-heap as soon as possible," Toph leaned against the nearest wall, "yeah, I was interested in what those two are up to, but my interest only goes so far…woah."

Toph straightened her back against the wall she was leaning against, expressing immense surprise. She placed both her hands against the wall and stood as still as possible. Aang remained where he stood, puzzled at Toph's behaviour, "what is it?"

"They're in _here_," Toph straightened up and turned sideways, laying both her hands and an ear against the wall in intense concentration. She faced Aang and made a 'shush' motion with her lips before carefully tracing her way along the wall, tip-toeing in the mud away from Aang. The boy whose unfamiliar hair was getting increasingly matted with wetness against his secretly tattooed head looked around as Toph stepped around the corner of the building to make sure no one was paying too much attention to them. If anything, people didn't pay _enough _attention to them. They honestly didn't care what the red-clothed people were up to. Aang tip-toed after Toph, trying to make as little splashes in the liquid mud and puddles as possible, until they reached a crumbling section of the hastily-constructed hut. Flecks of masonry had crumbled off, leaving a tiny hole in the wall that Toph passed to allow Aang near. Toph pointed to one of her ears to communicate to Aang to _listen_, not to _look_. Aang, recognising the signal, briefly thought that the pig-tailed Earthbender was being overly cautious, but then it was rather impressive that she had much of a conception of 'line of sight' at all, so he paid heed and placed an ear next just below the hole. He could hear two voices, one young and on the cusp of puberty, the other so unidentifiable that he could have been anywhere from late teens to his fifties and Aang would never had had a clue.

"…based on the extreme points of the calligraphic symbol for 'victory', rotating 10 degrees east three times a day, around the central square where they serve food," the younger voice, noticeably Smellerbee…and yet somehow _not _her…was saying to another presence in the room, "right now the tunnel entrance plan is facing 250 degrees from due north, and not due to change until daylight next morning."

"Do the insurgents have an escape plan in place in case of discovery?" the older, much deeper voice asked in a measured, regulated tone, without any trace of emotion whatsoever. Aang's eyes snapped wide open upon hearing it. Whoever Smellerbee was talking to, she was revealing every secret of Yuung's organisation to them.

"Yes," Smellerbee recounted, "a series of escape tunnels leading to undisclosed parts of the outer countryside, from which elements of Yuung's guerrilla forces are to fan out and infiltrate other refugee camps in the region in which they have outposts. They have contingencies in place so they can't be followed."

"That will be a problem…" the older man decided, "but we only need one target. Is Colonel Yuung in the compound right now?"

"Yes," Smellerbee answered curtly and to the point. A target? It had to be Yuung, but to get to him they would have had to attack the entire compound…Aang couldn't stand it any longer, he needed to know who Smellerbee was talking to. He moved his head to lean his eye against the tiny crack in the masonry, swivelling around to catch glimpses of the torch-lit interior. He could just about see the top of Smellerbee's head and Longshot's chin.

"Excellent, you've both done superbly," the droning voice didn't register the slightest change in tone, and when Aang attempted to look in the direction of the voice, he could just see the broad-rimmed hat covering the eyes of a man's face, and the top of a dark green uniform. Aang knew for certain what he was when that hidden face spoke, with deadly seriousness, "Jet will be proud of your work in the service of the Earth Kingdom."

"We're ready to do whatever he asks of us," the brainwashed Smellerbee spoke with reverence breaking into her young voice. Toph could feel the earnest emotion in her voice, and knew that the young girl honestly believed Jet to be alive, "we'll gladly follow him to the ends of the earth. Even into death, we will proudly serve."

Aang pressed his hands against the masonry, knowing even without Toph that Smellerbee honestly believed those words. They really were following him into death. He wanted badly to reach them, to bring them out of their mistake, and his need was acute enough that he pressed too hardly against the masonry, leading a portion of it to crumble inside the hut. Torch-light hit his face, and he squinted his eyes at the sudden brightness. He waited for his eyes to re-accustom, only to see all three inhabitants of the sparsely-decorated hut, Smellerbee, Longshot and the Dai Li agent looking at him in various stages of surprise. Aang paused, paralysed, looking briefly over at Toph, who could only offer an angrily condescending stare at his stupidity as advice. His eyes swivelled back, and he knew that unless he did something soon, his life was in serious jeopardy.

"Hi! Don't mind me, just checking the walls for leaks! Lots of complaints lately. Mm-hmm…" Aang smiled and nodded slowly, "looks like it needs some repairs! I'll just…go away…and leave you in peace…while I get some wall-repair guys together, 'kay?"

Aang smiled as widely as he could, and pointed a thumb to the side as an expression of his leaving, but he could see his plan had serious flaws as soon as Longshot raised his bow and drew an arrow quickly from his back, staring intently at the boy. All of a sudden the torch light disappeared, and compacted masonry appeared before his eyes. The change was so sudden that he was still figuring out how the wall seemed to move when a sharp metal arrow-head burst through and jutted out to a point less than half an inch away from the bridge of his nose. Looking down at the lethal piece of metal, he uttered a delayed yelp and flew himself back against the opposite narrow wall.

Toph took up a stance, feet embedded in mud, and pushed the wall inwards, making the hut collapse into a plume of dust and chunky fragments. Aang, still a passive spectator in all this, had to be forcibly grabbed by Toph before budging from his rooted spot. He was dragged to the side of the narrow alley, choked with an expanding cloud of debris, as Toph yelled with all the urgency she could muster "_run!_"

* * *

Smellerbee had spiralled back from the force of the collapsing wall, and lay sprawled on what remained of the floor, completely encased in a dusty cloud, eyes screwed shut and full of grit and coughing and spluttering up fragments of masonry in a desperate effort to find fresh air to breathe. She was finding it hard to think straight, all wound up in blocks. The only overriding concern she felt was to do what Jet wanted her to do. He had told her to find these bad people, and make them pay. She knew that's what he told her. That boy she had seen, was part of what used to be the Avatar's group…he was Fire Nation, wasn't he? He had to be a spy, an assassin, sent to kill Jet and the rest. That had to be it. As soon as he appeared, the hut was attacked. Just like the last time the Avatar's group had shown up, everything went wrong. Not this time…this time she was going to put everything right. Jet had told her that these bad people needed to be dealt with. Jet would never lie to her, and she would always follow him no matter what…that was the way of things.

No sooner had the rain made itself known, beginning to wash down her face and making the layer of dust that was collecting on her skin rinse off, than a strong, hard, gloved hand clamped down on her shoulder and a low, monotone voice spoke into her ear, "Longshot has been captured. There is a traitor in Yuung's midst. Stick close to Yuung and protect him. Kill the traitor. Jet is dead, but you still fight on."

"Wha…?" Smellerbee blinked her rain-filled eyes as the sky appeared above her out of the descending cloud. She was alone in the centre of the demolished hut, sitting on her backside with her arms stretched out to the ground behind her, leaning up. She had to think just then…she wasn't sure what just happened. She could have sworn there was a hand on her arm just then…but she was slowly remembering what happened. Yes, the traitor in Yuung's midst. She suspected as such, but now…Longshot was captured. Who could be so audacious? That boy…she remembered a boy…the Fire Nation boy. Yes, the traitor, set to kill Jet…wait, Jet was dead, so he had to be about to kill Yuung. She needed to get back to him urgently, stop the boy from harming him. Stop the boy, yes. Because of that boy everything was going wrong.

The Avatar made everything go wrong. He always did. Smellerbee drew Jet's hook from her back, determined to kill the boy. The Fire Nation boy…the Avatar…it didn't matter which. She just needed to kill him. She darted from the ruins of the hut, straight through the cloud of dust, and disappeared from view.

* * *

The red-clothed children ran from alley to alley, darting rapidly through the narrow passage-ways, making certain that they couldn't have been followed. The torch-light flickered across their faces, and their feet skidded occasionally as they rapidly navigated the sharp corners of the refugee camp, jumping and ducking past disinterested refugees as they went with near-panic in their faces. Their breath grew haggard, but they couldn't dare stop. Eventually, however, they didn't have much choice in the matter, as Aang tripped over an extended bare foot jutting out a pile of rags and fell face-first in the mud. Again. Toph slowed and stopped, trudging through the relentless mud back to Aang and leaning down towards him with hands resting on knees, almost out of breath from all the running. She looked down exhaustedly at the short-haired boy sprawled front-first across the mud, and swallowed some phlegm before gasping, "you know…I really don't think you deserve the name 'twinkle-toes' anymore…"

Aang was too exhausted to even pick himself up. He simply let his body rise and fall with his breath, recovering in the mucky dirt. At the very least the frenetic activity had pushed off the pneumonia. He had been so fundamentally useless it was almost comical. Toph eventually felt inclined to rest her back against the side of a stone hut and collapse, the seat of her trousers sinking into the mud, leaning her head back and recovering her breath. Eventually, with some effort, Aang stretched up his gangly limbs and crawled up the wall, sitting down next to Toph with a similar disposition, lungs feeling like they were about to burst out of his chest. He thought back to Smellerbee's conversation with the Dai Li, and spoke with a hint of desperation, "I can't believe it…"

"What do you mean you can't believe it!?" Toph spoke incredulously towards Aang, "it was obvious from the moment we first came across them in Ryojun! _I_ knew it, _Sokka _knew it…even Sugar Queen probably knew it, if she felt like getting over her posthumous crush anytime soon…"

"…it was that obvious?" Aang looked over confusedly at Toph, before looking down at the rain-soaked ground, "here I was thinking I was being paranoid…"

Toph laughed out loud at Aang's dour pronouncement, "Trust me, 'Kazuki', you are _by far _the most naïve and trusting person I have ever met. And I really don't mean that in a good way."

"But…if you all knew, why didn't you say anything!?" Aang interrogated the blind girl, "now the Dai Li know the layout of Yuung's base! The resistance is going to come under attack!"

"That jerk would never have listened to us anyway," Toph answered, "besides, we don't owe him anything. It's just one pack of murderers taking on another pack of murderers. If anything the world would be better off without 'the Colonel'."

"So we just roll over and let the Dai Li win?" Aang pondered, "okay, I get what you're saying about Yuung, but we owe the Dai Li even _less_. We can't just let them take over what's left of the Earth Kingdom."

"Aa…Kazuki, you said before that people are dying because everything's out of balance…" Toph said in complete seriousness, "that ending the war needs a lot more than just defeating the Fire Lord, that there's too much hatred piled up and everything's too complicated. Sure, I'm no divine medium between heaven and earth, but what that means to me is…nothing we do here is going to make a lick of difference. The two sides are going to keep fighting even if we help one against the other. Nothing's going to change until we get them both to just _stop_."

"But…this is your country you're talking about," Aang regarded Toph with sympathy, "you're talking about it so distantly. Don't you care what happens to it?"

Toph grew silent, and the rain fell endlessly on the teeming mass of humanity that stalked the camp, the children of Earth. Toph's fellow Earth Kingdom subjects. She paid no need to the water dripping down the bangs in front of her sightless eyes, and felt as best she could through the wet earth, reaching out towards those around her, and failing. The red-clothed girl said simply, "it's not my country anymore."

Aang stared at Toph. He had barely considered what the fall of the Earth Kingdom meant for the Earthbending Master. From what he could tell, he'd always assumed that Toph genuinely didn't care for the Kingdom, for any deep patriotic reasons, especially since she held her domineering parents and all the polite, orderly opinion associated with them to be synonymous with the Earth Kingdom. She was along precisely to get away from it all. And now…she'd achieved that escape. Magnificently so. For the first time, Aang could detect a feeling of loss that wasn't there before…not so much losing a home as losing a reason for acting. Both their thoughts were abruptly interrupted by stomping boots in the mud, in the streets all around them. Raised voices and angry exchanges erupted out of sight. It was the unmistakeable presence of the military, that odious feeling of domination that followed armies in their wake. The Earth Army was preparing to storm Yuung's base.

"We need to warn Sokka and Katara," Toph stood straight up, seemingly not regarding Aang, and walked towards the edge of the alley. Aang got up to follow, feeling that iron determination in her muscles as she walked through the mud towards the nearest tunnel entrance. As the sound of soldiers appeared and disappeared, with all that it implied, he felt no compulsion to disagree.

* * *

Yama had felt an urgent need to kill _something _for a fairly extensive amount of time. He couldn't remember when he first had this feeling, however. As far as he could recall, he didn't really have any dead relatives to avenge, which tended to be the norm rather than the exception around this place, but a perpetual and constant restlessness had plagued him for much of his young life. This need for something to fight, and the constant berating for beating up the wrong people, had instilled in him an extremely acute sense of whom it was and wasn't alright to maim. Beating up his younger brother for stealing his knife, for example, tended to elicit disapproval. Discovering a Fire Nation spy and slitting his neck from ear to ear, on the other hand, no one seemed to particularly mind. It was with such delicate application of cause and effect that Yama refined his ability to determine who was a friend and who was an enemy. That made him unusually suited towards guard duty, despite his tender young age. However, that didn't stop him constantly spinning his knife with its point fixed on a spot on the solid ground in bored impatience. He lay on his side on the hut's lone futon, with one hand holding up his head with his elbow resting on the bedding, and the other twirling the knife on the ground. Over and over and over again.

The knife fell over upon reacting to a loud banging on the door, as someone in a hurry was rapidly thumping it repeatedly all the way until Yama picked himself, holstered his knife, stretched his arms, walked over and pulled aside the metal slit that was installed in the wooden door. His hand reached back over to the handle of the knife when he saw the short-haired Fire Nation boy looking overly concerned through the other side of the slit, looking back occasionally as that other weird girl who had been with him had crossed her arms in impatience.

"We need to get in! Something really bad is going to happen!" the boy spoke urgently. Yama sighed in exhaustion. Damn stupid kid forgot the special knock. Something bad _was _going to happen and it wasn't going to be happening to himself, Yama decided.

"Okay…how wide does the Earth stretch?" Yama asked wearily, firmly deciding that, when in doubt, be difficult.

"Oh! Err…um…egh…" Kazuki fidgeted nervously, wracking his brains for what he was supposed to say, actually physically hitting his head at one point, "uhnn…ehhh…gah! Uh…_fingernails_!"

That was the right answer, or at least a bit of it, but Yama was not letting the twerp get away _that _easily. He protested, "hey! You just guessed that!"

Kazuki paused, looking up at the slit in the doorway as innocently as the little spawnling of a race of murderers could manage, "…no I didn't."

"Okay, if you weren't just making it up…" Yama played with the little boy's fragile nerves, "tell me the _whole _password…"

"Uhhh…" Kazuki looked aside, shrugging his arms out into the rain, "it reach…_stretches _to the uhh…tips…of the fingernails?"

"Nope," Yama smiled evilly at the Fire Nation brat struggling in the mud to figure a way to get in. The girl behind him was slapping her forehead in incredulity.

"Oh! Well…I was just testing you! Yes…" Kazuki giggled disarmingly, pointing a finger up authoritatively, "of course the password is really…_edges _of the fingernails. I mean, obviously…"

"_Closer_, but you might as well give up," Yama spoke with a degree of satisfaction, "you can't get in just by _guessing _the password, even if you do get it right. Looks like you're stuck up to your elbows in mud for a _long _time to come, my friend."

"We don't have time for this…" the girl behind Kazuki strode forward and planted her feet in the ground before the door, stretching her arms are. No sooner had her palms flown downwards than the door Yama was peering through vanished into thin air. The blast of cold air made him step defensively backwards as the two red-clothed kids stepped over the buried remains of the door and advanced towards him.

Yama was used to dealing with trouble-makers, even Earthbenders, so he didn't show the least bit of fear as his legs separated on the ground and his hands flew to the knife in his holster, ready to unsheathe it in one swift motion that would take the confidence of the girl's face. The shaggy-haired 13-year-old stared down the interlopers intently, declaring, "if you want to get in, you're going to have to go through me, first."

"You wish," the girl responded, slicing her palm through the air to send the patch of ground Yama was standing on abruptly six feet to the left. Yama stood posed to lash out at thin air, and he could only blink in confusion as the two red-clothed brats didn't even break their stride as they walked through the spot he had been standing on only a second before to pull aside the tapestry on the wall behind him. The girl spoke away from Yama, "there are more dangerous people than us gathering round the place. I'd be more worried about _them _if I were you."

Yama was still poised to draw his knife at the empty space in front of him as he watched the two of them disappear into the tunnel behind the tapestry hanging on the bare wall. With nothing to face, he had to relax his pose, and mentally slapped himself for being such a pushover. He walked over to the gaping rectangular hole where the door used to be, and at the rain that still fell through it, the wind lapping at the torches and making them flicker brighter and dimmer. He groaned loudly, "why worry when I got people like _you _on my side?"

"_Out of my way!_" screeched a murderous voice, as a blur of grey, black and red materialised around the corner of the doorway and pushed him aside with incredible force. He blinked at the brief sight of two fiery eyes and blood-red war paint, and looked as he lay on his backside at the fluttering tapestry through which that _thing _had sprinted through. Yama clutched the side of his head in tiredness. It had been too long a day, he decided. Any more surprises and he may just decide to get himself relieved and call it a night.

Those small evidences of exhaustion cleared suddenly, as his other hand, resting on the stony floor, registered something frightening. The ground was shaking, regularly and rhythmically, with the constant, mindless stamping of hundreds of boots. Yama started to his feet in adrenaline-fuelled terror, and his eyes snapped to one of the flickering torches. Grabbing it, he rapidly doused the others and flung the tapestry aside, intent on warning the others of the approaching danger. From outside _and _in.

* * *

Major Mugong's feet stamped into the mud as he ran up the hill-side overlooking the refugee camp. The rain was starting to get less than torrential, but as a soldier he had become accustomed to viewing weather as logistical impediments rather than something to complain about. The tree-dotted hill-side offered an excellent vantage point and good cover, but these advantages were made null-and-void in the dark, rainy gloom. Before him, hidden amongst the trees, stood two Generals, standing before several squads of men taking no heed of the rain whatsoever. The Major stalled in front of his superiors, standing to attention and saluting before giving his report, "sir! The men have received fresh intelligence about the position of Yuung's base and are moving into position as we speak."

General Gin Hong, arms crossed behind his back, nodded in affirmation, "good. We can begin the operation as soon as everyone reports in."

General Fong, standing beside the General of Twelfth Army as the Commander of the local militia in charge of the area, looked askance at the commanding officer with unease. Making sure that the men didn't overhear their commanders disagreeing, Fong asked, "aren't you even going to check what the intelligence _is _first?"

"If the merest whiff got out that we were onto his strategy, Yuung will change it without a second thought," Gin Hong informed the local General, "waiting would give him a window of opportunity to modify tactics. We can't afford to wait until we are certain of the nature of the intelligence. We need to act, and act now."

"But if the intelligence is inaccurate, we could have a major fiasco on our hands," Fong muttered to Gin Hong. The Commander of Twelfth Army turned his attention away from the refugee camp visible by torch-light from the hillside and towards the local commander-in-chief, regarding him curiously.

"You know…for a man with a reputation for aggressiveness you don't seem particularly…aggressive," Gin Hong inquired. Fong recognised the disparity and shifted nervously on his spot.

"We're facing fellow Earth Kingdom soldiers. There's no way I could ever be enthusiastic about that," Fong looked over Gin Hong, registering his aggressiveness in other ways, "and I can't just blindly trust the information the Dai Li furnish upon us."

"It's not like we have a choice," Gin Hong communicated to the other General, facing forward, "and no matter our attitudes towards them, they're very good at what they do."

"We have no idea how they gather their information," Fong queried, "and besides the point, why exactly have they become so influential all of a sudden? Ever since the Peace they've been _hyper-active _about spreading their tentacles in our business. And you kow-towing to them all the time definitely doesn't help matters."

Gin Hong's eyes snapped angrily towards Fong's. The General kow-towed to _no one_, and made that abundantly clear in his voice, "you are _this _close to treasonable behaviour, General Fong. Your reputation is hanging by a thread as it is. Don't make things worse by concocting wild conspiracy theories around the Earth King's representatives. Honestly, you sound like one of those 'Base 77' crazies."

"The Earth King never sent _representatives _before," Fong snapped back, "you're completely under their thumb! For all we know the Dai Li themselves might be calling the shots, we're their unwitting pawns and he's standing right behind me isn't he?"

"You have excellent intuition of your surroundings, sir, but I believe the Earth King would prefer that you restrict your valuable insight towards _military _matters," the Dai Li agent purred beneath his broad hat, standing only a short distance from General Fong despite no perceptible indication of how in the world he _got _there in the first place. The Earth King's agent spoke to Gin Hong authoritatively, "our plant inside Yuung's organisation has revealed the layout of his compound. Sir, you have all the information you need to clear out the base. However, I must remind you that the Earth King has promised that any Fire Nation hostages held by Yuung should be considered as _civilians _and not _prisoners_."

"I have already given the relevant orders to my men," the General answered, wondering why the Dai Li felt this point needed such strong emphasis, and with another question in mind, "any word on Yuung's contingency plan should the base fall?"

"He does have a plan, to lead his men underground out of the refugee camp in case of attack," the Dai Li revealed, "fortunately, one of our newer recruits is in position to track his escape. He comes highly recommended, sir."

"Very well," Gin Hong acknowledged the Dai Li's remarks and looked out towards the camp. The rain was beginning to clear, and individual buildings could be made out amongst the torches for the first time. The human life present inside the camp could be perceived as little more than a collection of moving blurs, barely recognisable from this distance, but nevertheless the disorganised, irregular, filthy and cramped accumulation of stone huts and orange twilight was unmistakeably alive. In short order the place would be in ferment, lives would be torn apart, an entire way of life brought crashing down around the poor, witless dregs, and the only consolation the General could bring to himself was that the people of the camp brought it upon themselves. It was scant comfort.

The Commander of Twelfth Army addressed the soldier still standing to attention before him, dimly lit by the distant orange glow of the Seventh Yalujiang Strip Refugee Camp, "Major, prepare your men. The operation begins immediately."

**To Be Continued…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06


	10. Liquidation

"Sorry! Pardon me! Coming through! 'scuse me! Sorry! Gangway! Just need ta get past! Whoopsydaisy! Sorry 'bout that! Got places to go! Lots of things going on! Oof! Hey…sorry…really sorry, didn't…heh…see you there. See ya! Sorry! Passing through! Can't stop! 'scuse me! Watch ou-AAAGH! …owwwww…" Aang leant up to rub the bright red gash on his forehead inflicted by an inconveniently-placed lump of rock jutting out the floor of the torch-lit cavern. The short-haired, heavily-mudded boy winced at the contact of his fingers on the inflamed skin as he lay sprawled across the ground with one arm stretched behind to keep him at least half-up. Various irregulars and other support personnel looked warily at the two-left-footed boy who was tearing his way through the caverns at high speed, only to fling themselves out the way of a fundamentally more obstinate force of nature. Aang groaned, "it's impossible to be polite these days…_hwuh!_"

"Come on, _dead-weight_, get your butt in gear!" Toph pulled Aang up by the arm and dragged him behind her at high speed, leaving him finding it hard not to trip over from the surprise. Whatever the case, she seemed to know where they needed to be going.

"'Dead-weight'!? Is that my new nick-name now!?" Aang asked loudly in-between gasps as they ran. Toph faced straight ahead of him, seeming intent on whatever direction she was dragging them both in. Aang gibed, "_I _could have picked a better insult than that!"

"Unless you want that name to be _literal_, you'd better keep that trap shut!" Toph snapped back, running head-long down a long corridor before abruptly twisting into an adjoining tunnel without any prior warning, leading the somewhat-Avatar to yelp as he was dragged violently into the dark abode. As Toph let go of Aang's hand he found himself crashing into the centre of a sizeable alcove, having lost any semblance of a centre of gravity. He looked up to see Katara and Sokka, framed in torch-light, looking down at the both of them in some surprise. The stone shelves that ringed the chamber behind the two red-clothed Water Tribe teenagers were stacked with barrels of various unknown and potentially exciting substances.

"There you are!" Sokka remarked angrily, "we're never going to get our stuff back and out of this place if you keep wandering off whenever you feel the _urge_."

"It's not my fault I had to feel across _half the base _for you guys!" Toph counter-attacked, "something really bad's going on. We don't have much time."

"I was worried about you, Aang," Katara leant down to inspect the gashed boy with sympathetic eyes underneath her two brown bangs, "we didn't know what happened to you! It's not safe around this place. We're not welcome here anymore and you…look…_disgusting_. What the heck happened to you two!?"

Katara looked up accusingly at Toph as if their wet, mud-encrusted condition was all the blind girl's fault. The Earthbending Master huffed irritably, "sheesh. You're welcome, _your sugary majesty_. Nice to know you're so grateful for us trawling through the rain and muck to find out that Smellerbee and Longshot are Dai Li plants and that the Earth Army is going to storm Colonel Yuung's base any second now."

Katara was left flabbergasted, and any offence she felt at Toph's insult was utterly swamped in sheer shock, which somehow managed to be swamped in turn by an even greater shock at how her brother responded to the news, "great! We can use the distraction to get our stuff and escape!"

"_What do you mean, 'great'!?_" Katara exploded at the Warrior, who found himself flattened against the barrels as he stepped back as far as he could from Katara's advancing, rageful face, staring angrily at Sokka's diminishing figure, "the Dai Li's tortured and brainwashed the last of Jet's friends, Azula's cronies know where we are, these people's last hope is going to be destroyed, _and all you can say is GREAT!?_"

"Kataraaaaa…" Sokka made a vain attempt to calm his venomous sister, holding his arms out in a conciliatory gesture, "please, please, _please_, just for once, at least _try _to see the big picture?"

"Don't you _dare _talk to me like that, Sokka," Katara growled in a low voice, millimetres from her brother's face, emanating fury from every pore in her body.

"He's right, Katara," Toph stepped marginally closer, the only one there with the wherewithal to actually contradict her, "there's nothing more we can do here. It's beyond help. All that's left is to help ourselves."

"I can't accept that!" Katara turned angrily at the blind girl, instinctively clutching onto her mother's necklace inside her red clothes, onto the very idea that there was nothing more important than fighting for what was right. The Waterbender looked down at Aang, still sprawled on the floor, the one for whom they all fought, the living embodiment of the world's conscience, and appealed, "Aang…we can't accept that…"

Aang looked up at Katara, unsure how to answer. He wanted badly to agree with her, but when it came down to what he really knew, all he could do was look down to avoid the Waterbender's gaze. It represented in itself a decision that this wasn't a battle worth fighting. Once, what was literally a lifetime ago, he could have made a difference to this place. Not anymore. Now the Avatar was just…dead weight.

A cascade of gongs rumbled through the ground beneath Aang's fingers, and soon the tunnels outside the alcove were in a state of organised chaos, like antibodies fighting to isolate a virus, unseen. The Army had begun to storm the base, and throughout the tunnels came calls to hurry, to get out, to grab everything and run as fast as possible. The strange distance between the activity outside and the moment of contemplative stillness inside the group's alcove seemed to reinforce the palpable difference between the worlds the two gangs of fighters inhabited. They couldn't allow themselves such distance for long.

"We can argue later," Sokka decided in all seriousness, "right now our first priority is to get out of here. You all head to the nearest escape tunnel. I'll wait until the Colonel's left his office and grab our stuff, then I'll come join you."

"Wait…wouldn't the Colonel just take the stuff _with _him?" Toph picked apart the obvious flaw in Sokka's plan. Sokka looked condescendingly at Toph, as if he had anticipated that all along. On recognition that he _hadn't_, the warrior abruptly started spazzing in frustration, clutching his skull while making irritating whining sounds.

"_Argh! _I'll need to get there before him!" Sokka realised, running through the three of them out into the tunnel opposite, pausing only to point commandingly at the rest of them, "you get to the tunnel! We don't have much time! Come on! Move! Move! _Move!_"

Sokka was gone in a flash, leaving the group alone to stare at the Sokka-shaped lump of thin air the Warrior left behind, contemplating his entertaining but nevertheless highly disturbing outburst. Aang had to shrug, getting to his feet and wiping off his muddy self, "well…it's not like we can stay here."

The group, in single file, treaded out of the alcove and made their way in the direction of the nearest escape tunnel, dull-minded and drained of urgency in spite of the gongs. Their distance was very suddenly shattered by a series of abrupt explosions of earth from further down the tunnel behind them. The tunnel erupted into a smorgasbord of dust, shouting, and stamping, and the red-clothed benders were instantly much more motivated to run as fast as their muscles could cope, their ears ringing with primal screams.

* * *

The organised chaos of the liquidation of Yuung's base was rapidly turning into bog-standard, ordinary chaos, leaving Sokka relatively unmolested as he ran down the tunnels towards Yuung's office, nearby where they were hiding beforehand. While teams of irregulars erected defences and collapsed corridors to harry an as-yet-unseen foe, throwing supplies from one to another like they were balls in some kind of contact sport, the Warrior ducked and weaved through the bottlenecks of people running, stacking things, shouting and other strenuous military-related activities. He was starting to suspect that the military life really wasn't what it was cracked up to be. He may well have ruminated how being a lone hero against the odds fighting with the Avatar for peace in the world was much more rewarding, but as of that moment most of his mental energies were directed towards the rather more immediate task of staying alive.

Halting himself from a wild sprint by flattening his back against the cave wall near the narrow portal to Yuung's 'office', he took a second to regain his breath and peered around the corner to see the sparse and barely-used interior of Yuung's centre of operations. Sokka had guessed the Colonel to be far too hands-on to keep a regular filing system, and it'd never even occurred to him that asymmetrical warfare would need anything resembling paperwork. Everything was functional, consisting of weapons, spare clothes and something half-soft to sleep on, entombed in unlit darkness. Easily noticeable, however, was a small bag dumped on a stone stump that may have been either a seat or a desk depending on Yuung's mood, Sokka reckoned. The room looked empty, and the bag looked very assuredly his.

Peering rapidly left to right, Sokka started from his prone position to a flying sprint into the centre of the dark room, stopping suddenly just before the stump to grab onto the bag's strap with one hand, exclaiming quietly "don't mind if I do!"

"Don't mind if you do _what_, exactly?" a low voice obliterated the Warrior's thought, rooting him to the spot in unutterable, immoveable terror. A large, grubby hand shot out of the shadows to the left of Sokka to clamp onto the red-clad Water Tribesman's outstretched arm. Eyes flitting down at the impossibly strong arm, he found himself giggling in fear as his hand snapped open and the strap of the bag fell out of his fingers. Colonel Yuung's haggard face emerged from the darkness, his other arm holding a bag of the supplies had been packing over his shoulder, and spoke menacingly, "because if you were about to take some valuable property of the Earth Kingdom Resistance with the intent of using it for your own petty purposes…_I think I'd mind_."

* * *

"Come on! Move your scrawny, unblemished butts! The Army's going to be on us any second!" Heng, the old man of the Yalujiang tunnel, waved the last few stragglers through the wide escape tunnel, torch in hand and ready to scarper himself at a moment's notice, peering with some justified paranoia towards the rapidly-clearing corridors behind him, feeling the shudders and shaking as the last few rear-guard irregulars fell…one by one. It was long past time when he could have been able to make a stand, but he earnestly envied those young 'uns who volunteered to stand and fight to let crotchety, useless people like him run away with their tails between their legs. The flow of escapees ended and he decided to wait for ten seconds for any stragglers to turn up. Nine seconds later, to his great surprise, the only member of the Resistance in uniform strode angrily into view. Despite all appearances, Heng recognised authority, but felt himself old enough to ignore the traditional rules of deference, "what the heck took _you_ of all people so long!?"

"Trouble with a fraudster," Yuung advanced quickly towards the tunnel, holding two bags of supplies over his shoulder with one hand and dragging a complaining red-clothed teenager behind him on the floor with the other, "didn't want to recognize he'd outstayed his welcome. Did the rest of the Avatar's team pass this way?"

"Yeah…yeah they did," Heng scratched his head at the circumstances, but nevertheless affirmed the Colonel's question, "I've no idea what you think they're involved with, but from that look on your face I _really _don't want to be in their shoes right now."

"Look! You got it all wrong!" Sokka appealed, attempting as hard as he could to seem conciliatory, "with all the gongs going off, I just wanted to help! I was just gonna help you with your stuff! You know…logistics and all that!"

"I told you to _get lost_. You'd have helped my logistics a whole lot more by just following my instructions," Yuung reached the tunnel and threw Sokka inside ahead of him, making the Warrior yelp and then groan painfully as sharp rock gashed his cheek. Yuung was less than unrepentant, "our operation's been discovered and my forces dispersed in six separate directions. If I have to worry about a self-serving, two-faced little rat who doesn't care for anything except his own hair, then you're an _obstacle_. Do you know what I do to _obstacles_?"

"Listen, I know we've had our disagreements…" Sokka turned over to face Yuung, holding his hand out while still lying on the ground, "but we're on the same side! We just need to…you know…pool our resources!"

"You don't _have _any resources to _pool_, short stuff," Yuung stepped into the tunnel to tower over the prone figure of Sokka, fists clenched, "if you want to help so badly, get moving. But don't you dare _think _about running out of my sight…"

"Hey! Hold the door!" a young voice called from down the corridor, distracting Yuung from the Warrior. Sokka peered down between the Colonel's legs to see Yama huffing his way down the corridor, holding a torch ahead of him. Just behind the 13-year-old boy he could see another figure, looking murderously intent beneath her war-paint…Smellerbee.

Sokka gasped a little and scrabbled as fast as he could backwards down the tunnel, turning abruptly to tear down the dark crevasses as fast as he could without hitting anything in the face. Yuung, looking back at Sokka's attempt to escape, moved into a stance with the intent of crushing the life out of the idiot, only for the young lookout to interrupt his frayed concentration, "Colonel! Sir! We've got something _really important _to tell you!"

Distracted enough to let Sokka escape, and knowing he was distracted enough to let Sokka escape, the Colonel thumped the nearest wall in sheer irritation and challenged the latecomers with all the authority he could muster, "_this had better be good!_"

"It's _bad_, sir! _Really bad_!" Yama halted in exhaustion before the Colonel, looking far more scared than anyone his age had any right to be. While Smellerbee snarled in impatience, clutching onto her knife and Jet's hook in both hands ready to kill anything that moved in front of her, Yama's voice trembled as sweat rolled its way down the side of his face, "we've been _betrayed_, sir!"

Yuung could tell this was the case, as the base seemed to be falling apart around him. He could feel the juvenile terror emanating from the young soldier before him, and Yama's gasp as a cloud of dust erupted behind him surged with adrenaline. Yuung stared intently at the cloud, seeing in the shadows the men stamping their way through it, men who had overrun the last few remaining positions. Earthbender fighting Earthbender, his own soldiers fighting his own soldiers. He grabbed onto Yama's shirt and brought him forcefully into the tunnel, "tell me on the way! If we don't get out now we'll never get out!"

Yuung's men didn't need telling twice, and ran down the wide tunnel as fast as they could. Yuung stepped back to take a stance, never daring to contemplate the last time he would see this place, knowing for certain that whatever remained, his people would understand. It was for them that he fought. And it was for _him _that _they _fought. He knew they'd understand, as he brought the entrance of the tunnel down, just before the Earth Army appeared in all directions. The last of the light disappeared from the tunnel.

* * *

The last of the rain was ceasing as they had emerged from the tunnel into the dark, tree-studded countryside. Good news for their clothes, but not so good news for their feet, as the mud sucked on their footwear. Katara, Toph and Aang had mostly ran alongside the rest of Yuung's men, swerving round the various corners and dead-ends meant to confuse anyone trying to trace the tunnel outside, and they didn't have much choice but to ingratiate themselves with the Resistance's routine while they waited for Sokka. The former soldiers were taking it upon themselves to make an on-the-spot roll-call by torch-light to figure out the make-up of this new battalion that had been rather arbitrarily formed. As the irregulars hid themselves in the bushes, Katara peered around the corner of the tree the three of them had been taking refuge under towards the tunnel entrance, jutting out of the ground at a 45 degree angle, and none of the insurgents wandered far from their rally point. She could see The Duke and Pipsqueak assisting one of the professionals with their roll-call.

"So, is that everyone here?" the soldier had asked the tiny, copper-helmeted kid who was assisting him, who didn't quite have it in himself to stand to attention.

"Yeah…I guess so…" The Duke sniffed and wiped his nose with his free hand, the other planting a pike firmly in the ground, "but Smellerbee and Longshot ain't here…"

"Never mind about your friends. You knew if there was an evacuation you couldn't count on ending up in the same place," the soldier stated with the regulation minimum of sympathy, leading Katara to momentarily worry from her vantage point about what would happen to Sokka. The soldier addressed the rest of the irregulars, "alright, listen up! As soon as Heng brings up the rear we'll be heading downriver to the Fourth Refugee Camp! We'll have to lay low before we can infiltrate the area, so that means we're gonna be sleeping rough for a few nights!"

"What if it's the Army bringing up the rear?" a sickly man wrapped in bandages spoke with steel behind his voice. The former soldier, dressed in civvies, let out a small laugh.

"Then they're going to know what a rice cake feels like," the soldier glanced towards the four Earthbenders flanking the tunnel entrance, their stance ready to collapse the entrance at a moment's notice. They tensed, as did the soldier, The Duke, Pipsqueak, all the irregulars in the bushes and the Avatar and his group hiding beneath the tree as someone seemed to emerge out of the tunnel. The figure scrabbled out, unlit without a torch, and seemed to look heavily confused before steadying himself on the muddy ground before the entrance.

"It's one of ours!" one of the Earthbenders called out, and indeed on closer inspection it turned out to be a red-clothed, top-knotted, disguised Water Tribe Warrior looking somewhat dazed and extremely worried.

"Sokka!" Katara called out, relieved that her brother was alright. Aang noticed, leaning against the tree, that as Katara ran out to meet Sokka, Toph seemed to relax against the tree, like she was holding her breath all this time until she was certain it was Sokka out there. Aang felt momentarily like giggling, but heavier concerns took over as Katara came closer to Sokka only for the Warrior to seemingly ignore her and wander towards the tree where Aang and Toph hid, occasionally looking back at the tunnel entrance in a series of nervous fits.

"Hey, Sokka, what happened back there…" Toph stood up to ask only to be cut off by the Water Tribesman's ramblings.

"Nothing happened! Everything fine! Just gotta go!" Sokka made an unnatural smile and sounded almost insane, looking past the two of them into the darkness of the forest behind them, Katara following urgently, as he muttered half-coherently, "lots to do! Places to go! Gotta go! Time of the essence!"

"But…what about our stuff?" Aang asked sincerely, standing next to Toph before the advancing Warrior, only to be spun around and shunted forward into the forest by Sokka, along with Toph, the both of them being a little too stunned to comment.

"Doesn't matter! Don't need it!" Sokka blurted, not breaking step even when pushing two 12-year-olds against their will, "everything's fine! Better than fine! Hurry hurry hurry!"

"What do you mean _don't need it_?" Katara spun Sokka around, and found that his entire body was coming out in nervous tics in regular intervals, "what's the matter with you!?"

"Nothing matter! Nothing wrong! Just need to move!" Sokka veered dangerously between creepy smiles and wide-eyed horror, "need to move _now_! Bad thing happen! _Really bad thing happen_!"

"You just said nothing was wrong!" Toph turned to face down Sokka, who looked like a guinea-robin being cornered by a ravenous, blood-thirsty croco-wolf. Toph pushed her advantage of being mentally stable, "Sokka, _what is going to happen_!?"

At this, Sokka's paranoia seemed to dissipate, as he relaxed and sighed depressively, holding his palm across the grazed half of his face, shaking his head slowly, "you know, things would be so much easier if you just do what I ask at times…"

"I'll tell you what is going to happen!" the air snapped with the electricity of Yuung's voice as all attention turned to him, and then to the group stuck in the middle of the irregulars, as the Colonel of the Resistance emerged in torch-light from the tunnel entrance, flanked by nervous Yama and blood-thirsty Smellerbee, while Heng closed the tunnel behind the three of them. Yuung stood the tallest of all the Resistance there, his voice carrying throughout the humid night air of the rally point, drawing all obedience towards it, "you're going to be surrounded, isolated and summarily executed for treason against the true authority of the Earth Kingdom!"

The change was instantaneous, as from all directions came a concentration of attention, with uncountable pikes, battle-axes and bending stances directed against them from every direction. Each member of the group turned outwards, taking a direction each. Sokka swiftly turned around with his sharpened boomerang ready, whirling it with him to slice the head of a pike that someone had attempted to skewer him with. Katara let her swift turning around flow through her arm, picking up a semi-circle of water in one swift motion and letting it rise and fall in preparedness. Toph swerved around to plant a foot in the ground, sending a small wave of earth outwards in her direction to ward off those who had dared to approach her. Aang, instinctively, turned in the last, uncovered direction and took up an Airbending pose, deciding intentionally to ignore the fact that it wouldn't have made a single difference _what _pose he adopted. Before him, The Duke had quickly scouted forward to point his pike straight at 'Kazuki', the Fire Nation boy, with a self-satisfied grin on his face, "I knew it…I knew it _the whole time_…"

"You're making a big mistake!" Toph warned the Colonel angrily, taking none too kindly to being cornered. While the irregulars surrounding them kept their distance, knowing the reputation of the Avatar's companions, Yuung took several assertive steps toward the group, clearly unafraid of Toph's threat. Yama and Smellerbee approached alongside him.

"I made a mistake in letting you in my base in the first place," Yuung declared, "you've acted suspiciously ever since we first crossed paths. Keeping secrets, stating half-truths, surreptitiously undermining every facet of my organisation, prevaricating and avoiding every step of the way. You people, so intent on reaching the Fire Nation that you were willing to steal documents even when the base was being raided, questioning my authority to the point of _violence _and just in general taking my people for a bunch of stooges. And now I know why. You're spies for the Dai Li."

"_What_!?" Katara exploded in rage, feeling a huge shudder up her spine in being associated with Azula's monsters, "that makes no sense!"

"It makes perfect sense," Yuung contradicted Katara, who momentarily had to warn off another pike by snapping it with a strip of water bended with a wave of her hand. Yuung halted a short distance from the group and stood with hands behind his back, authoritatively, "the Avatar is dead, yes? Killed by a Fire Princess who, _by you own admission_, controls the Dai Li. Nothing is heard from any of you for two weeks, then all of a sudden you turn up here for no reason, with a Fire Nation citizen embedded with you no less, voicing an earnest desire to enter the lands of our sworn enemy despite having no desire to actually _do anything _there. Then, the moment I prevent your passage from taking place, my base is invaded, and your 'warrior' here attempts to steal the means by which you can escape to the Fire Nation, leaving us behind to be captured. I knew even before this girl here told me she saw you conversing with Dai Li agents and aiding the kidnap of one of our conrades."

"_Us _talking with the Dai Li?" Sokka switched his attention between the shiny things pointed at him and Yuung's fierce, stone-faced gaze, his cultivated hatred now directed at all of them. Sokka yelled back, "why don't you ask that _girl _what she was doing all this time!? Toph and…Kazuki found _her _talking with the Dai Li!"

"That's funny, how you waited until _now _to mention that," Yuung voiced sceptically, "you'll excuse me if I find the much-delayed word of a Fire Nation boy and a _collaborator_ a little hard to take at face value."

"It's true!" Aang blurted out, turning towards Yuung, "she and Longshot were captured when their leader Jet was killed! They've been in the hands of the Dai Li for nearly a month!"

"Don't you _dare _say that, Fire Nation!" The Duke advanced a step, bringing his pike closer to the short-haired boy's face and staring at it in inconsolable hatred. The two honest eyes staring back at him, even if they were Fire Nation, made him falter, and he wondered, "…how could you have known that?"

"It was you talking to the Dai Li! I saw you!" Smellerbee stood forward and faced them all before Yuung, visible in the dark, emerging moonlight peering through the breaking clouds, angrily, tearfully certain of what she was saying, "Longshot's been captured because of you! You always ruin everything when you come along! All of you! Jet wouldn't have died if it weren't for you! You could have helped him! And you killed him! And now you're helping the ones who murdered him!"

"Listen to her! She's contradicting herself!" Sokka challenged Yuung, "you want to take the word of a prisoner of the Dai Li over us, huh!? You trust anyone just so long as it feeds your ego!"

"You keep quiet, you traitor!" Yuung reacted badly to Sokka's insult, the knuckles of his hands turning white in rage. Sokka realised abruptly that he'd struck a nerve and, smiling devilishly, pushed his luck as far as it went.

"You can't call me a traitor, I was never part of your ridiculous organisation!" Sokka stared down the angry Colonel, "look at you! You have your own uniform when no one else has! 'Your' base, 'your' organisation, 'your' men! You even talk of the people as if you own them! You call on them and expect them to _owe _you something for putting all their lives at risk! And now you're calling yourself 'the true authority of the Earth Kingdom'! You're small fry, '_Colonel_' Yuung! Using old men and boys to do your dirty work, killing old ladies in tailor shops, taking disagreement as tantamount to treason against _your _regime, strutting about like you own the place when all you own is a pile of dirt!"

"I do what I do for the people of the Earth Kingdom!" the Colonel spat at the Warrior, "you'll never understand that!"

"Oh, I understand it alright," Sokka targeted, "only too well. You can't tell the difference between what the people want and what _you_ want. You don't love them. You just want them to love _you_. Well here's someone who doesn't love a cold-hearted, self-centred monster like you. Now what are you going to do about that?"

Yuung seethed in rage, breathing harshly, staring with utter, cold fury at _the enemy_. He'd spent his life killing people like that, anyone who didn't recognize him. Anyone who didn't love him. The scrawny little worm didn't deserve repentance, and neither did anyone else like him, the questioning, the confrontational, the _other_. Either they would love him or die. And he knew what to do with this mocking little insect.

"_KILL HIM!_" Yuung commanded to his men, _"KILL ALL OF TH-"_

Yuung was stalled by a sudden jolt to his system, and everyone halted in their orders to see the great and infallible Colonel Yuung sway unsteadily on the ground and blink in a haze of confusion. He reached behind himself and pulled something long and thin out of his back, and brought it round to look at it closely, his vision fazing in and out as he inspected the narrow, pointed stick of wood, quilled at the end and dripping some black substance out of the point. He stared angrily at the dart before it slipped out of his fingers, as his near-inhuman metabolism made a concerted effort to keep him conscious.

"No…no they won't get me! No matter how many there are they'll never get me! Look out, men, and fight for what you believe in!" Yuung stood assertively, rocking from side to side as he railed against fate, "believe in me, men! Believe in me! Don't listen to the traitors! To the collaborators! The enemy will perish! They're all around us! But they'll never get me! I know you'll do…I know…I know you love me…I know you love…"

Yuung plummeted into the mud, unconscious despite his best efforts, and everyone saw his fall. The Duke no longer concentrated on Aang, looking around fretfully at whatever was around them. Pipsqueak waved his trunk at every flutter of every leaf, as Yama and Heng waved their torches into the darkness. Smellerbee couldn't co-ordinate herself, not knowing where Jet's enemies could be. Being already in a defensive posture, the Avatar's group were the only ones who were even remotely prepared for what was coming.

The sound of marching filled the night air, shouts and cries of soldiers moving into position, from north and south, east and west, through the trees and through the muddy earth, as none of the irregulars had any idea where to place their attention. It was left to Toph to confirm for certain what they all already knew, in the darkness of the crescent moon, caught, in her own words, betwixt a mighty stone vice of doom. Expertly hiding the fear in her voice, she stated as plain fact, "we're surrounded."

**To Be Continued…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06

* * *

**Author's Note: **Bit shorter than typical, since this is basically the stopgap for the BIG BATTLE coming next instalment. That said, it's the most emotionally charged stopgap I think I've written thus far, since everything was basically leading up to this. I've had this scene playing out in my head for _months_, and now it's on paper I'm actually feeling a little dissatisfied with it. I'm never satisfied that my writing is as good as it should be, but the first half was largely written on the fly, being the stop-gap and everything.

I do love the Dai Li. They're such a handy plot device.


	11. Jiangjun

The first action of Gin Hong's troops was the General's own favourite tactic for surrounding forces, an expression of the Earthbending prowess for fixed defences and using that same prowess for offence: the circling wall. Troops surrounding the trapped guerrillas rushed past the General and his guests, General Fong and the Dai Li agent, to plant their feet in the mud and bring up their arms to form a continuous wall. Although the effort of circling the entire force left the line stretched thinly, the wall easily compensated for this, and as the troops slowly inched their way forward, so did the wall.

The former professionals of Yuung's outfit were not going to take this structure lying down, and the few Earthbenders amongst them rushed forward to force a breach in the shrinking vice that the wall represented. They held the firmest stance they could, and a section of the wall gradually slowed to a crawl as they exerted their strength against that of the Army soldiers. The rest of the irregulars were not trained for such an overt confrontation, and their first reaction was to fall back and point whatever weapon they had outwards at their enemy. The Avatar's companions were amongst them.

"It's the same guys who captured us!" Katara remembered the tactic bursting through the ground surrounding them, visible through the trees in spite of the night gloom, but it was on a much vaster scale than that they faced before during their first hair-raising attempt to cross the Earth Kingdom. Her eyes darted towards anything that might resemble the next stage of the assault, as did everyone else, "what do we do!?"

"We need to get out of here, that's what!" Sokka yelled, trying to be heard by the confused and frightened irregulars, "listen! If we charge a single point in the wall, we can blast a hole through and escape…!"

"Don't tell us what to do, traitor!" The Duke still seemed intent on following Yuung's last order, lunging his pike in Sokka's direction. The Warrior was left with little choice but to slice his pike in two, lunging forward himself to grasp The Duke by the front of his tunic, bringing the copper-helmeted, hateful little tyke close to his face.

"_Don't you get it!?_" Sokka yelled in the boy's face, "if we don't work together _we'll die_!"

"_Get your hands off of him!_" Smellerbee, her face a teary mess of sheer hatred, tore across the mud with the intention of slicing Sokka into meaty chunks. The Water Tribesman realised that the psycho was not a person capable of being deterred by grabbing them and yelling in their face, even if he didn't die trying, and with this in mind he threw The Duke bodily into the advancing wild girl, sending both of the Freedom Fighters sprawling into the mud.

"You people deserve each other…" Sokka commented. Toph could sense the plummeting mood, as the irregulars poured more of their attention towards the Avatar's group and Pipsqueak was swinging his log in several directions, having no idea who to fight. This was definitively decided, as the Earthbenders attempting to hold back the wall, at first seeming to make steady progress, were caught unawares by a dozen spiralling lengths of rope flying over the top of the wall. Unable to keep their attention in two places at once, they were too rooted to respond effectively to the rope circling around their limbs, and were dragged unceremoniously towards the wall, grunting in futility at their last attempts to keep the wall stable. The other ends of the rope seemed to move over the wall, unseen behind the tree line, and the Earthbenders were dragged out of sight.

All around them, came the sound of whirring rope making arcs through the air towards the group of irregulars. They homed in towards some of the soldiers directly, and Aang swerved round to hear Heng panicking as he tried in vain to keep one piece of rope from latching onto his wrist. Crying "oh no…_oh no!_" the rope tightened and Heng was dragged into the trees, his torch extinguishing in the mud as he flew. The Freedom Fighters recovered from their sprawled state only for Smellerbee to witness The Duke's body being coiled by a fast moving length of rope. The girl, teeth gritted swung Jet's hook to free the boy and planted it in the scared kid's hands.

"Take this!" she commanded, jumping to her two feet and drawing her knife, watching out for the streams of rope as they descended. The wall sped up its crushing speed, and in the distance trees fell as the ground crumpled up before it. People left and right were being snatched into thin air, and the Avatar's team was trying hard to remain cohesive in the maelstrom of terror that was bursting forth.

Katara let her hand spin from one side of her body to the other, and spun her entire body round to create a constant, sharp flow of water that struck out in a circle into the air around them, slicing lengths of rope as they threatened to descend on them. Toph ran forward to grab one of the rocky ends of rope with her bending fist, and pulled it as hard as she could above her, sending one of the troops controlling the other end of the rope screaming off his feet and, she felt, thwacking into a tree trunk. She crossed her arms to do the same to two more lengths of rope circling overhead, flying impotently without their owners a second later, but a length managed to coil itself around her arm.

Sokka lunged forward to slice the rope from her wrist, and took up a defensive position behind her back to ward off any more surprises. Aang found himself at the wrong end of a length wrapping around his leg, and briefly yelped at the experience of being dragged rapidly through the air feet-first. He fell to the ground as Katara sent a thin slice of water through his rope, feeling that familiar feeling of lying face-down in the wet mud for the third time that evening. He looked up to see that the Freedom Fighters had formed their own three-man defence, as The Duke swung Jet's hook at any rope that dared approach, Smellerbee was manically slicing her knife in several directions, and Pipsqueak was taking a page from Toph's book by letting the rope coil around his log only to pull it with his incredible strength, displacing the rope throwers themselves.

"We can beat them!" Pipsqueak yelled defiantly, "we _always _beat them!"

"When we're together, nothing stands a…chance…" Smellerbee's defiance drifted off into shock as her eyes fixed on a lone figure, planted on a tree behind the encroaching wall, looking intently at her with a bow in his hand. Despite the great distance, Longshot's calm, serene eyes transcended the distance, and his pupils, even dilated, stared deeply into Smellerbee's psyche, awakening a repressed memory, a fragment of another repressed memory, which was in itself a fragment upon a fragment. Confusions and uncertainties disappeared, and everything became evanescently clear.

"Just like old times, huh!?" The Duke sniffed, disguising his terror behind a homicidal glee, at once frightened and exhilarated by the chaos of battle. This exhilaration lasted only until he heard Smellerbee's inhuman cry, and turned back to see the wild girl shrieking in blind hatred as her knife spun round unstoppably towards Pipsqueak's back. The Duke cried for her to stop, impotently.

* * *

"Are your troops supposed to be dragged kicking and screaming into the enclosure as soon as they jump on top of the wall and loose their ropes?" General Fong asked an honest question towards Gin Hong, as their proximity was making it easy to see the battle in progress not going entirely their way.

"Not especially, but then that's what 'contingency' is for. If every battle went according to plan then there'd be no need for generals," Gin Hong rubbed his chin at the perplexing reversals his men seemed to be experiencing. They still had the upper hand, _by far_, but there was no room for complacency as far as Yuung's men went, even if Yuung himself had been incapacitated. Though he had only his new marksman's word for that…or rather he had his marksman nodding cryptically at the Dai Li agent by his side, and he only had the _Dai Li_'s word that it was the marksman's word. Needless to say, he proceeded on the assumption that Yuung was still alive and kicking, and yelled, "_Major! Move more men from Isolation to Offence! Keep the pressure on them!_"

"Yes sir!" Major Mugong, holding a stance to advance the wall, confirmed the General's command, and waved a number of his men to assist the teams of Earthbenders advancing to the wall. Behind the General there lay ready long lines of non-benders with pikes at the ready, watching silently as the Earthbenders did their work to degrade the rebels' defences. Another team of Earthbenders sprinted towards the moving wall and flung their arms down at the ground, making pillars of earth burst up from beneath their feet, catapulting them to the top of the wall. Some stayed on top to loose their ropes while others jumped into the enclosure itself. This carried on throughout the length of the wall. The Major was one who remained on top of the wall, glancing over the battle situation. He turned and shouted at the General, "sir! Their defensive line is disintegrating!"

"_Maintain your positions! It could be a trap!_" the General commanded, advancing himself to bring him closer to the rumbling wall. He could tell that the enemy's Earthbenders had either been neutralised or had withdrawn to more defensible positions, and he would have been remiss in his duties as General if he had assumed the former without considering the latter.

"Actually, I don't believe it is, sir," the Dai Li next to Gin Hong muttered under his breath, drawing the General's attention, "our infiltrator is making her move as we speak."

"How do you know?" Gin Hong queried, and was only answered with a nod upwards towards the marksman, crouching in the tree above them. The young, thin, silent boy looked down at the General and nodded informatively beneath his wide hat. The General understood the glance well enough, but its emptiness made his skin crawl. He made a conscious decision to stare ahead and ignore the Dai Li's informer, and concentrate on the advancing wall, "be that as it may, I won't accept their demise until it actually _happens_."

* * *

What remained of the resistance was falling to pieces all around them. There was panic and confusion and no one even knew who was on whose side anymore. Not helped by the fleeting appearance and disappearance of a feral girl intent on slicing into everyone's ankles. The Avatar's group had taken cover in the trees, fending off confused guerrillas and helping other confused guerrillas before they were abruptly dragged into the darkness in turn. Sokka was trying as fast as he could to formulate a plausible strategy, finally letting his boomerang fall limply to his side when he recognised there was _nothing _to formulate a strategy _for_. He'd had enough of this.

"That does it, never mind the Resistance!" Sokka declared, "we need to get _ourselves _out of here!"

Katara sliced through another probing length of rope before turning angrily to Sokka, "you of all people want to just _give up_!?"

"It's not called _giving up _if you stage a tactical withdrawal," Sokka responded testily, "we'll need a distraction! If we can get all the soldiers heading into one place, we can escape the opposite way."

"Leave that to _me_," Toph cracked her knuckles hungrily, ready to show these amateurs what 'Earthbending Master' _meant_. She darted out from the tree cover without waiting for Sokka's affirmation, disappearing into the darkness in a plume of dust.

"Okay, I don't care what you say, I'm going to get everyone so we can leave together," Katara left the tree cover in a direction separate from Sokka's, leaving the Warrior to gesticulate and bang his forehead against the tree in frustration.

"_That's not a plan_!" Sokka yelled, turning his attention swiftly to a clearing nearby, teeth gritted as the cogs turned in his head, "Aang stick close to me!"

"W…what!? We're not going to wait!?" Aang bunched up against the tree, not wanting to leave cover for fear of falling flat in the mud and _getting killed _for it this time.

"We'll need our stuff!" Sokka shouted, running from cover towards the clearing where the tunnel entrance lay, "and you'll be safer with a guy with a boomerang than on your scrawny own!"

Aang felt like protesting, but when one of his recently-acquired hairs atop his head was shaved by an errant pike thrown into the tree he was resting on, his grounds for disagreement evaporated into fragments, "I'm coming!"

The red-clothed, short-haired boy fled from under the tree, just as a heavily-scarred old man burst out of the bushes to reclaim the pike and look around in paranoia, rattling in murderous nervousness, "where are they? Where are the Firebenders? I know they're here…I know they're-"

His conversation was cut short as a feral wild girl leapt down from the branches above and pounced on him. As the old man's limp body fell into the mud, the girl lay prone on his back, her dilated eyes peering through the war-paint at her surroundings, seeing a landscape at once bizarre and manifestly simple. Jet had told her to do this, to kill the enemy, to kill those who threatened him. All enemies to the Earth King…to Jet…she couldn't tell the difference. There was no difference. She could tell that, it was so obvious, so clear, so _pure_. Her rage had been left open in its purity, seeing everyone and everything in its most obvious state: those to kill and those to leave alone. She was grateful to the Earth King…Queen…Jet, for giving her so many things to kill.

She scrabbled off the man's back, on the hunt for more.

* * *

Toph leapt over tree roots, rocky outcrops, and fallen soldiers, searching for the quickest route to the nearest section of wall. She couldn't think about the mania surrounding her. She couldn't _let _herself think of it. Because this was what she was made for: fighting…_everyone_. She grabbed hold of a rope-head with her bending arms and dragged down the peon who _dared _try to best her in combat, and dragged him down into the mud beneath the wall. Using him as a stepping stone, she launched herself at the wall, planting her feet on the stony side and running up the length of the encroaching mass. Squatting halfway up, she laid both hands and feet on the moving, rumbling, unstoppable stone edifice, feeling every impulse and effort acting upon it in her sightless vision, and _pushed_.

* * *

The Army soldiers were utterly unprepared for the push, and as the wall moved itself forwards at an impossible speed, they were tossed aside like dolls. Other soldiers leapt out of the way of the moving, vertical avalanche of rock and dust, those not being able to having the wind knocked out of them. Close to the wall and right in the path of the approaching mass, Generals Gin Hong and Fong and the Dai Li agent stood their ground, taking a strong stance and punching their fists into the air downwards at the ground, lifting their arms up to make another wall to counteract the moving mass about to mow them down. The two walls impacted, sandwiching together in an explosion of stone that sent all three of the Earthbenders flying backwards. Left lying flat on their backs, Fong groaned as he lifted himself back up, rocking his neck left to right to make sure it was still attached to his head, and rubbing his aching back.

"How many Earthbenders must there be in there to do _that_?" Fong queried. Gin Hong didn't the least bit fazed, leaning up to brush his feet off.

"They must have concentrated together to make that kind of pulse," Gin Hong ruminated, "that said…maybe two dozen."

Fong considered the implications, being reluctant to face other Earthbenders in the first place, and voiced his concerns, "you think maybe we should fall back?"

"Are you joking?" Gin Hong raised himself to his feet and commanded to the pike-wielding legion behind him, "_storm the breach! Let no one escape!_"

The soldiers let out a cry of affirmation and stormed either side of the Generals towards the hole in the wall they had formed. Two feet landing in the mud from a great height momentarily startled Gin Hong, leading him to spin around and see the Dai Li marksman standing upright beside him, emotionless and unthinking, peering like a hawk-eagle into the breach before sprinting with all haste into the enclosure. The General turned to the Dai Li agent, who didn't even seem dirtied by his fall, and the man half-hidden by his hat merely smiled in response.

"I'd like my associates to be allowed to locate and secure Colonel Yuung, sir," the Dai Li's request didn't sound especially like a request, but nevertheless Gin Hong made a reluctant nod, to which the Dai Li immediately turned away from and advanced into the forest to gather his own men. He snapped his attention to Fong, who was trying to suppress a mocking laugh.

* * *

Sokka ran across the clearing to where the unconscious body of Colonel Yuung lay, as everyone was too worried about themselves to consider guarding him. The Warrior had some difficulty pushing the soldier's mass to another side sufficiently to retrieve his bag, but nevertheless with some back-breaking effort he'd finally managed to retrieve what he'd set out to find in the first place, tugging the bag of documents off of Yuung's limp shoulder and onto his own.

"Hey…the wall's stopped moving…there aren't any ropes anymore…" Aang pointed out, peering fretfully behind himself, and on reflection Sokka noticed it as well. In spite of that, there was still shouting and panic and lots of people running away from things. It was in this moment of weird half-calm, half-chaos that Toph appeared, riding a square of earth forward at high speed, letting it crash against a tree branch as she leapt in the air and skidded to a halt before them. She breathed haggardly, but determinedly.

"Sokka, was your plan to get the entire Earth Army to storm the place?" Toph asked urgently, "'cuz _that's what's happening_."

"That means the other side of the wall must be unguarded," Sokka guessed, "this is our chance! Let's move!"

"What about Katara!?" Aang pointed out, only to be interrupted by a series of primal screams coming from the direction Toph had rode from. Their attention snapping forward, the bushes rustled with the collective mass of guerrillas fleeing their positions and running from one side of the clearing to the other in no conceivable decided direction. Emerging from the bushes was Katara, whirling streams of water in front of her in a concerted attempt to keep the Earth Army, unseen in the darkness, at bay. Sokka ran forward to tackle the Waterbending Master.

"We gotta go, woman!" Sokka yelled in panic, dragging his sister back from her position with his arms locked around her shoulders, getting hit in the face repeatedly by Katara attempting to break free of her brother's grip.

"We can't leave them! We can't!" Katara kicked up a burst of water from the mud, inadvertently sending both her and Sokka backwards past Aang and Toph, who found themselves faced with an utter blackness, inside which the enemy advanced. Two arrows whizzed past Toph's ears into two retreating irregulars behind her, leading her to try to raise a defence in front of her. In raising her arms, two gloopy balls of mud rose out of the ground, and her pushing them forward into the darkness seemed utterly ineffectual.

"It's too wet! I can't hit them with anything!" Toph fell back, only being able to raise a blob of wet earth to absorb an arrow headed straight for her. Sokka was too busy restraining Katara to effect anything like a defence. Aang was left alone in front of the darkness, utterly helpless. The abyss that opened up had absolutely physical weight, and Aang was about to be swallowed up in it.

His helplessness, his utter lack of function was being made manifestly obvious. Around him, there were people who needed his help, whom he couldn't help in any way. They were barely even aware of him, caught up in their own worries. Katara held an earnest desire to avenge Jet that was affecting her judgement, he could see that clearly. He could also see clearly that Sokka just wanted to get away, to deny this perversion of resistance. Toph was still fighting, but she was only fighting for herself, and now she was unable she was close to panicking, unable to assert her own independence. He couldn't help them inside or out, or any of the people behind him, or the people in front of him.

That same, strange, familiar abyss opened up in him again. It wasn't cold, like this place. It was warm, and welcoming, a place where he didn't need to be himself any longer. Being himself was such a burden in any case. He wanted to be in a place that didn't fall apart, disintegrate, separate, be that horrible atomisation that made the world so messy. He wanted that place where he could disappear into that greater whole, where joyous laughter reigned. His vision blurred, his balance drifted, and his head rolled to the side, where Yama was busy waving his torch, trying to ward off the things that wanted to kill him. Poor Yama, thought Aang, always wanting someone to fight, never considering what would happen if someone had thought the same about him. Not that it mattered anymore, as the boy was felled by an arrow.

Yama's torch fell onto a tree root, next to the clearing ahead of all of them, slowly extinguishing. For some reason Aang could feel the flame as one with his own, slowly fading away. More arrows embedded themselves into the ground next to Aang, as he looked calmly at the flame slowly disappearing. Gradually, the sounds around him re-entered, the cries of Katara, Toph and Sokka, the cries of those around him, falling under the pressure of the Army's advance. He couldn't let it go on. He felt anger rise in him. He felt angry at what the world had become, at what was happening around him. His breathing became louder, deeper, as his hatred began to coarse through his body, using his breath as the carrier. He felt himself reaching out, wanting to immolate those who would dare hurt his world. The torch-flame lying against the tree root, in spite of the dampness, inexplicably grew and strengthened, feeding on his spirit as it grew outwards. His blood churned, his oxygen flow setting his nerves on fire, and his eyes set on the darkness in front of him. He no longer cared if anything he did made a difference. Just so long as he made one. Just so long as he _made that darkness disappear_.

Aang stretched his arms towards the flame, eyes angrily fixed on the darkness ahead of him, and ran his fingers through the air in front of him. Following the tips of his fingers, from one end of the clearing to the other the ground burst into flame. It didn't need fuel to feed it. The Avatar's spirit was fuel enough. His breath was oxygen enough. His _hate _was _heat _enough. And the advance of whoever it was in front of him was stalled. Katara and Sokka stopped their struggling to look in awed horror at the flaming wall Aang had formed, while Toph gasped, but for different reasons.

Aang could see him, on the other side of the wall of fire. Face half-hidden by his hat, he even looked like a Dai Li agent, the long, thin expert marksman raising his deep, empty eyes towards the Avatar, lit orange by the flickering flames, drawing an arrow from his back and loading it onto his bow, pointing the sharp arrow-head directly at Aang's head. Aang didn't dare budge, or even look afraid. There wasn't any point.

"_Longshot!_" a deep voice rang out, and the archer's head twisted unnaturally atop his shoulders as a giant log impacted against his skull. Longshot's body fell to the ground, and above it stood a huffing, heavily-wounded Pipsqueak, barely able to move his enormous mass, choosing at this final moment to be certain in his allegiances. He bellowed at the red-clothed kid looking at him in surprise, "don't just stand there! _Go! Get out of here!_"

Aang looked forth at Pipsqueak, not wanting to abandon him, but he nodded in recognition, respecting his decision. Pipsqueak, in spite of his wounds, smiled a childish, honest smile, which Aang returned as he wandered from the wall of fire. The other members of the group followed him, even Katara, still too stunned by Aang's Firebending to form coherent thought. She could only mutter, "we can't…"

"Just follow the leader, and everything always turns out alright," Pipsqueak smiled, wavering from tiredness as his wounds made their effect on him. He was his own leader now, and he roared as he turned and raised his log, charging into the advancing soldiers. Soon the flames across the clearing began dying down, and all was left in darkness once again.

* * *

A surge of earth burst through the wall, and four people clothed in red ran through the dust, emerging into the dark forest. They didn't dare stop running, needing to get as far away as possible, leaping over every obstacle they came across, occasionally looking behind themselves for pursuers. Compared to the chaos of the enclosure, they were bullets of fiery activity bursting through a gentle sea.

"Okay…" Sokka advanced a cautionary prognosis, "I think we're safe…"

"You wish!" Toph halted to take a defensive posture, and it wasn't long before branches broke and leaves were shunted aside by Earth Army soldiers emerging from the darkness around them. Completely surrounded, the four of them turned to defend a direction each, prepared for battle whatever the costs. Aang stared the Major in the face, wondering if after all this they would be felled at the very last hurdle, just like the last time they faced overwhelming odds.

"We'll cover your escape!" Major Mugong stated, his fists turning in the direction of the wall they had left behind, as did the other soldiers in obedience to their commander, "get to safety as soon as possible!"

The four of them relaxed their stances, unsure what to make of this. They were being treated like innocents caught in some crossfire. Aang looked back from face to face and the others were in as much confusion as he was. The three he saw, in their red, muddied clothes, wearing top-knots and bangs and light-weight dresses and tunics, made for a tropical summer island. It finally dawned on Aang why they weren't being captured…the soldiers thought they were Fire Nation hostages.

"What are you waiting for!? Move!" the Major commanded impatiently. Kazuki could see that the others understood, and he and Gameshin exchanged nods. Despite the visual communication, Ming Zhe understood as well, while Ursa looked wistfully in the direction of the wall, wanting to deny that she had anything to do with their enemy, to lash out at the soldiers who dared to suggest such a thing, but knew it to be impossible. They ran from the centre of the group of Earth Army soldiers, who moved ahead to protect their route of escape, trying to track down stragglers.

While Kazuki and his friends ran into the darkness, above the Earth Soldier's heads one person had managed to escape the net. A person who knew how to use the tree line, and strike with utmost fury at her enemies.

* * *

Colonel Yuung groaned, trying to pick his sluggish body out of the mud. He barely remembered what had happened, a mixture of memories, half-memories and even some quarter-memories fading in and out of consciousness. It was only when his head managed to pick itself up out of the ground enough to see, fuzzily, the uniform of a young Earth Kingdom General looking at him in amused expectation that he developed the self-consciousness to panic.

"No…_no!_…you'll never get me! You'll never get me alive!" Yuung directed as much venom as he could towards Gin Hong, who stood over him motionlessly.

"That's funny, because it looks an awful lot like I _have_," Gin Hong concluded in all seriousness. He glanced back at the cavalcade of black-uniformed folk with faces half-hidden by their wide hats, and said in a business-like manner, "these gentlemen here seem incredibly eager to talk with you, _Mister_ Yuung, so I would deeply encourage you to play nice. Who knows? You might even make friends…"

The General walked away from the former Colonel, feigning disinterest in his fate, while the black-clad Earthbenders surrounded Yuung and held him behind his back, stone gloves encasing themselves as rudimentary handcuffs around his wrists. Yuung didn't want it to end this way…it had only barely begun, "listen…listen to me, brothers! You're all being tricked! The Fire Nation has taken over the Earth Kingdom! The highest levels have been infiltrated by a Fire Nation Princess! As we speak they're undermining the entire Earth Kingdom! You can't let them get away with it!"

The Dai Li agent closest to Yuung let out a self-knowing chuckle and looked the prisoner straight in the eye, "I'm afraid it's far worse than _that_, Prisoner Yuung…"

Yuung stared straight into that knowing look, and felt a panic rising in him the likes of which he'd never experienced before. He felt like tearing that face off, and indeed began trying despite its futility, "you…_you traitors! You're the enemy! You'll be the death of us all! All of you!_" Yuung spat all the venom and bile he was capable of as he was dragged into the secure metal cart for transporting him elsewhere, _"You'll never defeat me! You're not the people! The people will come for me! The people love me, not you! I'll kill all of you! I'll kill all of you, yo-_"

Yuung was cut off by the final slam of the doors of the Dai Li cart, cutting the last bit of light from the clearing where the tunnel entrance was left just another mound of damp mud.

* * *

Their run had developed into more of a brisk pace, now they knew they didn't have much reason to be caught. For some reason that made them _more _afraid than if they'd simply been on the run. It made them feel…dirty. But now they had no choice. They were Fire Nation in name, deed and legality, and now the Fire Nation was the only place they could go. It was utterly surreal. They couldn't feel safe no matter how near the Yalujiang border they travelled. It was only minutes away, but the way was hidden in the trees, just like themselves.

"I wonder if anyone else got out?" Katara wondered out loud, worrying deeply over the people left behind.

"We'll never know now…" Aang felt similarly dour, having been unable to affect any change. His depression, in contrast to the fiery anger he demonstrated before, drew Katara's interest.

"Hey…Aang…" Katara advanced uncertainly, "what…what _was _that back there? That…fire."

Aang didn't like to think about it either. He felt like another person had achieved that, not himself. The only honest answer he could give was "…I don't know…"

"Hey, makes our job easier if he's already practicing," Sokka made his easy recourse to jokes.

"Hey!" Toph halted, bringing them all to a stop, feeling in several directions at once, "did you feel that?"

"No, I didn't _feel _'that'," Sokka crossed his arms, "and it's self-evidently obvious _why _I didn't _feel _'that'. So please enlighten us poor, sighted folk what this 'that' is that you happen to _feel_."

"Just…something," Toph couldn't be more specific than that. It seemed to come from above, like someone climbing one branch to another, but…it was too quick to be human. Sokka groaned.

"Yeah, that's real specifi- _AAIIEE!_" Sokka fell to one side to avoid a sudden blur that descended from the tree-tops. Something lunged forward towards him, something sharp, and he brought his arm up to stop it. Arm met arm and he found himself trying to keep a blade from entering his face. The force behind it felt like a tank bearing down on him, and staring straight into his eyes was a snarling beast from the darkest depths of whatever underworld there was for lost souls. Her slight body felt impossibly strong, and it was taking all of Sokka's efforts to keep the huffing, war-painted girl from killing her.

A blast of water knocked Smellerbee off of Sokka, but she recovered almost immediately, empty eyes focusing on the Waterbender who had attempted to subdue her. Another stream headed towards her, but the wild girl dodged it with ease, and sliced the air in front of Katara, sending her reeling backwards over a tree branch, knocking her head against a rock and leaving her concussed. Toph couldn't tell what direction the girl was focusing on, and when she advanced to try to subdue the thing, Smellerbee wheeled around at lightning speed, the fist nearest to the blind girl smacking her straight in the skull and sending Toph disorientatingly earthward.

Two opponents dealt with, Smellerbee advanced upon Sokka and Aang, Sokka had managed to get to his two feet and was getting ready to face down the insane, salivating girl when Aang stepped forward to try to reason with her, "Smellerbee! You don't want to do this!"

"How could you tell!?" Sokka turned to ask, leaving a momentary but decisive opening for Smellerbee to rush forward and leap up, kicking Sokka in the face and sending his head into the mud. She rushed towards Aang and sliced the air near him, his feet dancing as fast as they could to avoid Smellerbee's mad swings.

"Jet wouldn't have wanted you to do this!" Aang tried to find some opening into her mind, "you're a Freedom Fighter! You're not meant to do this!"

"Jet wants me to…" Smellerbee gasped through her saliva, staring intently at Aang with wide eyes, "I do what he says…I'll follow him into death…"

"He's dead already!" Aang narrowly avoided another slash, "you were there! You saw it!"

"He tells me what to do…" Smellerbee breathed heavily, ignoring the limitations of her own body to do near impossible things, "he needs me…he doesn't need you…_you always ruin everything!"_

Smellerbee shot forward and delivered a slice that cut into Aang's cheek, sending him backwards into a tree nook, with no means of escape. Aang panicked, upon seeing into those empty eyes of hers, her saliva dripping on the ground, her entire body exhausted but still propelled by an invisible force. Aang could see there was no point trying to reach her mind. She didn't have a mind anymore.

"Ruin everything…sent to kill Jet…got to protect Jet…got to kill the boy…the spy…the traitor…" Smellerbee heaved as she raised her knife to deliver the killing blow, "…the boy! Kill the boy! For Jet! _Kill him! Kill the AVATAR!_...ugh…"

Smellerbee shuddered, finding it suddenly hard to breath. She made a final attempt to carry through her last mission, her last command, but her empty eyes drifted upwards into nothingness as she crumpled to the ground before Aang. The Avatar didn't dare move, but before him, behind the fallen body of Smellerbee, a copper-helmeted boy held before him a hook that once belonged to a famous Freedom Fighter, its blade stained with blood. Beneath that helmet was a small, shuddering boy, his runny nose joined with flowing tears, mind near broken from the strain of recent events.

The rest of the group began to groan as their consciousness returned to them. Sokka's head, emerging from the mud, blinked precariously at the situation ahead of him, and he immediately realised it was not a situation that invited comment. Toph sat up and wondered briefly whether the mud was confusing her senses, coming over with a deep sense of guilt when she realised it wasn't. Katara only managed to rise a short distance before she gasped and brought her hands to her face in shock. Aang gradually calmed, ignoring the cut on his cheek for the moment, and looked sympathetic towards The Duke, who in the space of a few minutes had lost absolutely everything. He lowered the hook and stood still, sobbing.

Sokka approached and lay a hand on Aang's shoulder, indicating that it was best for them to go. Reluctantly, Aang assented, picking himself up and joining the rest of the group as they slowly, one by one, began walking away. They realised that they were probably the last people The Duke wanted to be around right then. But The Duke's own thought processes confounded them, and the boy stared into the darkness that the Avatar had disappeared into, and mumbled sobbingly, "…Aang?"

**To Be Continued…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06

* * *

You know, I'm wondering if I should up the rating on this thing. Honestly, I was trying for something similar in style to the series and this scene was nowhere near as _bloody _when I first thought of it in my head.

Anyway, here you have the centre-piece of the whole story! The big, desperate battle with people dropping like flies left, right and centre. And joy in that I managed to get two nights in a row with stories in them. By rights I shouldn't really be concentrating on this since I still have a lot of work to do, but I got a lot of things done this week so I'm writing horrendously depressing and violent fan-fiction as a reward! Yay! Which just goes to show that if I didn't have such inhibitions on my time, I'd be able to churn out one of these complete stories a fortnight. Just like the episodes themselves! Creepy, huh?

Anyhoo, just one more part to go to wrap this story up. Might appear anytime in the course of this week. Hope you likey.


	12. Sunrise

General Fong wasn't entirely sure what the contents were of the strange, gritty drink his second-in-command had recommended him, but after a long night of restless activity which had led him to be staring blinkingly out of his office window at the early summer dawn creeping over the tree-lined horizon he was very grateful for its existence. He downed another cup and immediately felt his muscles shuddering to life at the taste of the stuff, bringing him strength enough to turn around and face the Commander of Twelfth Army, who seemed to be urgently active on nothing but adrenaline alone. Fong wondered if Gin Hong shared the same habits as he did when he was commanding armies in the field, keeping on his toes in frenetic activity before collapsing on some soft surface and sleeping deeply for four hours straight, leaping back into action straight afterwards. Fong remembered when he'd been that active. Nowadays he was too restless to sleep and too exhausted to stay awake. Gin Hong was only ten years younger than him. Was ten years really that much of a difference?

"We got one-sixth of the force, it seems," Fong stifled a yawn while he wandered over to where Gin Hong was busy running his eyes from one report to the next, keeping track of the situation as it was unfolding, "that's better than nothing."

"Eliminating one-sixth of a dedicated guerrilla force is worse than eliminating none of them whatsoever," Gin Hong's attention never wavered, "now they have a story and fresh martyrs. This is the kind of stuff that _makes _heroes."

"So what was the point of this whole exercise?" Fong queried, offering his cup of strange black stuff only for Gin Hong to wave it away, "my outposts have reported a few stragglers from the liquidation, and the reports spread across the entire length of the Yalujiang Strip. If your prognosis is correct, then we've just turned a localised troublespot into a Province-wide rebellion."

"Don't remind me…" Gin Hong flung his papers to the other side of Fong's desk, collapsing into his seat, "I wonder what the Earth King is going to make of this…"

"In my experience the Earth King doesn't make much of anything," Fong informed the other General, "things _have _changed, somewhat."

"Well…we got Colonel Yuung…that _is _something…" Gin Hong tried to look on the bright side, "news of his capture could have a demoralising effect on the rest of the insurgency, I guess…"

"I'd heavily recommend keeping Colonel Yuung's capture a secret for now, sir," the low, monotone voice drew up the Generals' weary attention, and they both saw the Dai Li agent standing just in front of the closed entrance of the office, seeming as pleased with himself as always.

"I much appreciate you actually appearing at the _front door _for once, Dai Li, but I'd still feel more comfortable if you put in the effort to at least _knock _first," Gin Hong leaned forward to address the Earth King's representative, "and besides that, what use could Yuung _be _except as a propaganda coup? All the information he had was made redundant the moment he was captured."

"On the contrary, sir, we believe Yuung will be of invaluable assistance to you in the days ahead, just so long as news of his capture is kept a closely guarded secret," the Dai Li spoke from beneath his wide-rimmed hat, "securing his capture was our highest priority, and your success in this regard has earned you the Earth King's highest commendation…"

"Now, hang on a minute there…" Gin Hong gesticulated at the Dai Li agent, ignoring the Earth King's commendation for now, "are you seriously proposing that Yuung will be prepared, contrary to all known evidence and every single one of his principles, to assist us in exposing and destroying the last remnants of the insurgency? Now since from all reports he'd rather _die _than help us, I'm mightily interested in finding out howyou propose to convince him otherwise."

The Dai Li simply smiled, "we have our means of persuasion…"

* * *

"_Traitors! Collaborators! You don't deserve to dirty my feet with your crushed skulls you…let go of me! You have no idea who you're dealing with!_" Yuung screamed at the black-clad people dragging him wordlessly through the dank halls. He had no idea where he was, and didn't care, just so long as he could break free of the restraints around his arms and legs and bury these people underfoot. He struggled endlessly, but the Dai Li barely seemed to acknowledge him, in spite of his richter-scale-level shouting, "_you'll learn not to mess with me! The last lesson you'll ever learn! I'm going to have every last one of you killed! By the people if not by my bare hands!_"

"The process must be strenuously documented, in both methods and results," one Dai Li spoke ahead, addressing the others and ignoring the prisoner, "Princess Azula is very interested in acquiring a thorough account of our techniques."

Yuung's jaw dropped as much in offence at being ignored as in surprise, "you really do work for her! You call yourselves Earthbenders!? Uhn…let me go! _Let me go you Fire Nation saboteurs! Assassins!_"

"We wouldn't want to displease her," another Dai Li commented, out of Yuung's narrow, disorientated field of vision. He couldn't be certain, but the corridors felt like they were getting smaller, "this case will require a Type 7 re-education. No harder than is usual, his emotional instability is easily sufficient for our purpose. The resources of this base shall be adequate."

"Too scared to talk to me, is that it!?" Yuung challenged, dragging his restrained heels along the stone ground, "you just don't want to see how weak you are! You talk big, but you're small men in inside! _I'll show you! Face me like men! I'll show you you cronies of the Fire Lord!_"

"It's sad that he doesn't see the wisdom in serving Azula," another Dai Li piped up, opening a door inside which the corridor let in the only source of light, "but he'll see wisdom soon enough."

"Heh…see!? You're not men at all! You're cowards!" Yuung was dragged through the portal of the doorway towards a chair, snarling and near-incoherent as he was strapped in, the last ray of light being cut off as the door was shut, "you didn't want to fight so you gave up! You abandoned the people of the Earth Kingdom! There's a war out there and I'm the only one ready to fight it!"

"There is no war." The room light up in a dull orange light. As Yuung tried to focus on where it came from, he noticed it travelled around the room in a constant circle, with the Dai Li in the centre, speaking calmly.

"What is this!? This another game of yours!? You're so cowardly you don't want to admit there's a war out there!?" Yuung challenged.

"There is no war." The Dai Li repeated, calmly and soothingly, caringly, "You are Safe. You are Free."

"What…no I'm…no they're not!" Yuung tried to concentrate, but the shifting light was making it extremely hard, "no one is! I make them safe! I make them free!"

"You are Safe. You are Free." The shadows moved around the black-clothed man, "They do not need you."

"Of course they need me!" Yuung snarled, his eyes screwed shut, but no matter how hard he tried the light managed to fall and rise in his eyeballs. There was no consistency, no stability, "they need me to lead them! To protect them! They love me!"

"They do not love you."

"What…?" Yuung's eyes searched around for something to fix on, some means of escape, but the light always rose and dimmed no matter where he looked. He couldn't escape it, "they do love me! They have to!"

"They do not love you. They do not need to love you."

"They don't love me…" Yuung grew angry, staring at the calm man in the centre of the light, the only stable presence in the room, a calm island to focus on. He yelled at the island, "_I'll make them love me! They'll love me or die!_"

"They do not need to love you. You are Loved already."

"I'm loved…?" Yuung's resistance melted away. He fixated on that calm pillar in front of him, who seemed so reassuring, so authoritative, so friendly…

"You are Loved."

"I've never been loved before…" Yuung began to cry, his mind reduced to that of a child. His final needs fulfilled.

"You are Safe. You are Free."

"I am Loved!" Yuung sobbed tears of joy.

"There is no war."

Inside Yuung's consciousness, there was no war anymore. Everything was Safe, and Free, and Loved.

* * *

Aang and his friends had grabbed sleep however they could once they crossed the Yalujiang, in tree-trunks, stone tents and each others' body-heat, but it was never more than brief shut-eye. They needed to get away from the Yalujiang Strip as quickly as possible, and travelled in stops and starts throughout the night, further and deeper into Fire Nation territory. They had wandered into Ryojun as the sun was rising in the east, casting deep shadow before them. The sun seemed to herald their arrival into the Fire Colony, and more than a few people stopped to look at the tired, exhausted quartet of kids that entered the port city. They crossed the still-incomplete railroad tracks that led to the Yalu Pillars, and their feet began to meet stone cobble as the smoky plumes above them gradually groaned into life.

Their travel had been arduous, but uneventful, ever since they crossed the river, leaving them little reason to talk to each other. Their journey into another world was gradual, and couldn't be interrupted until it was completed. Now they were here, in this calm dawn to a place of life and liveliness, the chaos they'd left behind felt unimaginable. The distance, and the sun on their backs, led to reappreciations and reconsiderations. They travelled close to the harbour, one street removed, where shopkeepers were beginning to set up their wares and militia soldiers were changiwould'veng watch. The crow-gulls let everyone know in no uncertain terms that it was daylight, calling out above, and Katara grew restless.

"We could have helped them…" the Waterbender spoke, breaking the morning silence.

"They didn't _deserve_ our help…" Sokka dismissed, blinking from the residual tiredness he felt.

"Nothing we could've done would've made a difference anyway," Toph attempted a more reasonable defence of Sokka's intransigence, "we could've stayed, and fought, and get captured or die, but we need to find Iroh and get Aang back up to full strength again. That's more important."

Katara felt conflicted, realising their priorities but still mulling over the thousands of possibilities, "I guess you're right…but…to just give up like that…and so many died…I can't shake the feeling that they died because of us."

"Katara, you _know _there wasn't anything we could've done…" Sokka began.

"Yes there was," Aang interrupted, sounding strangely formal, "there were a million things we could've done, just like there are a million things we could do every single day, and don't. We can't keep beating ourselves up over consequences we couldn't foresee."

"But…we could've…_anything _would've been better than what happened…" Katara struggled.

"We could be dead. So no, _anything _would not have been better," Toph remarked, "especially since we'd have died in the defence of a pack of murderers."

"The situation was just too complex, there were no certainties," Aang considered, "without my Avatar powers, it was just best to get out of the situation while we still could. We weren't making anything _better_. I know it's hard, but we have to think of ourselves first."

"So it's all about _us_, isn't it!?" Katara turned angrily at the others, "so many people needed our help and we were too self-centred to think about them! This quest to the Fire Nation! All this!"

"_Ursa_…we're peasants from the north, _remember_," Sokka attempted to calm his sister down, "talk about quests might make the locals _suspicious_."

"Fire Nation peasants…" Katara spoke bitterly, reaching inside her dress to clutch her mother's necklace, "…I never wanted to be like them. Never. And here I am, ashamed to look in the mirror because I don't recognise the woman staring back…but then I look into the face of an ally, a friend, and I begin wondering if they're any better...I just want to know what's good and what's bad. I knew it before, I just…I just want to know who to hate, and who to love…"

"Everything's out of balance," Aang shrugged, "until they're put right, there's just no answer to what you're asking."

"Yeah…you got that right…" Katara looked down at the cobbles, and released her hold on her mother's necklace. Her gaze fixed on the short-haired boy looking sympathetically towards her. She felt an inescapable urge to lean down to his level, holding onto his arms and staring him straight in the eyes, pleading, "when I first saw you…I knew you were special. Everything I've done was for you, for what you represented. I just want to know…when we go through all this…that you're worth it. Please…" Katara knelt closer, gripping Aang's arms tightly, "please tell me that you're worth it…"

Aang tried to give Katara a straight answer, but once again he looked away, "there's no answer to that, either. Ka-…if you believe it…that's all that matters."

Katara sighed, letting Aang's arms go but keeping her stare stable, "then I'll believe it. Even if it's the only thing I have left…I'll still believe it."

Aang felt able to look into Katara's eyes again, knowing the honesty of Katara's statement, saying with his own honesty, "I believe in you too."

"I think I'm gonna hurl…" Toph commented. She didn't tend to take kindly to schmaltziness.

"To- Ming Zhe!" Sokka exclaimed, "don't you know better than to interrupt Kazuki's and Ursa's valuable bonding time? Can you even _comprehend _the destruction this may wreak on their budding and nascent relationship?"

"_Gameshin_…" Katara indicated testily, standing up to think about how the word sounded in her mouth, "I'm never going to get used to these names…"

"You're the one who picked 'Ursa'," Toph crossed her arms, "and you've never explained where it came from."

"And I never _will_, either," Katara crossed her arms in response, before contemplating her thoughts in a deeply interested manner. She shrugged. Everyone had their reasons for going to the Fire Nation. Aang needed to learn Firebending, Toph needed to find Iroh, and she suspected strongly that Suki featured strongly in Sokka's reasons. Maybe there was a reason for her to go to the Fire Nation besides helping Aang. A reason for herself, encapsulated in that name, 'Ursa'. She had certifiably no clue what it was, but it still bore thinking about.

"Okay…since we're starting to get halfway comfortable, maybe we should think about finding a place to rest up before retrieving Momo?" Aang advanced his opinion.

"Scratch that," Sokka stretched his arms, "we should be thinking about getting something to _eat_."

"So _that's _what's been grumbling all this time," Toph smiled, "I thought a colony of badger-moles was tunnelling under us all night."

"Quiet, you," Sokka pointed at Toph accusingly. Aang burst out into a fit of giggles, drawing surprised attention from everyone around. Katara was so encapsulated at the sandal-footed boy that she began to giggle with him.

"A- Kazuki! You're laughing!" Katara grinned. Aang looked over and wiped an eye from his laughter.

"Heheh…what?" Aang asked innocently, still gleaming, "it just feels like old times, back when I was still called…"

"_Aang!_" a small voice cried out from down the street. The Avatar's friend's attention snapped towards the tiny figure that was attracting attention from street vendors, early-morning wanderers and militia soldiers alike. He wore a copper helmet, several sizes too big for him, and clutched close to him a bladed-hook. He was shaking uncontrollably.

"Aang! I know it's you! It has to be!" The Duke's voice shook as he addressed the Avatar. Aang looked from the child to his friends repeatedly, trying to figure out what to do. People were beginning to look far too suspiciously at them all. The Duke shouted down the street, "I'm sorry for doubting you! I'm sorry for all I did to you!"

Aang felt like speaking back, but Sokka placed a hand on his shoulder to warn him not to, shaking his head solemnly. While Sokka was motioning for them to turn away, Aang still looked back at the last of the Freedom Fighters.

"I know it's not your fault! But…you're alive! I don't know why but you're still alive!" The Duke shuddered, "you're the Avatar! You're the one who's supposed to make everything right!"

Aang wanted to respond, fervently, to The Duke's questions. Aang wanted to re-assure the boy that everything was going to be right. That he'd make everything better. The Duke wanted a cause to fight for and Aang could provide it.

"We can make everything right, Aang! We…we can fight the Fire Nation! Together! We…" The Duke spoke with hope in his voice, "we can win the War! Destroy the Firebenders! I'm sorry I doubted you before, but anything's possible if you're alive!"

Aang wanted to re-assure him. Aang wanted to do a lot of things. But Kazuki just turned away from The Duke and began walking. Two female soldiers, stationed nearby, nodded to each other to apprehend the trouble-maker.

"Please! I just need…something!" The Duke's face was a mess of tears, disappearing into incoherence, "you're the last hope in the world, Aang! I don't care what you look like! I just want to help you!"

Aang looked behind himself, but Kazuki kept on walking. Gameshin and Ming Zhe had already made up their minds. Katara lingered the longest, wanting to reach out to the tearful boy being flanked by soldiers, but Ursa had to turn eventually. Sokka briefly looked back, with a sympathetic appreciation, at the Freedom Fighter. The Water Warrior considered the old times, when he felt the certainties that little soldier felt.

"I just want…something…anything…" The Duke dissolved into sobs as the soldiers took him, gently, realising the boy's fragility but still determined to their duty. The Duke mumbled, "…anyone…"

Gameshin knew the old times were over, and they weren't coming back, and walked away with the others, pretending not to know the boy. The Duke was led away, but none of them saw him being taken into custody. They couldn't dare. He belonged to another world now.

Gameshin, Ursa, Ming Zhe and Kazuki walked up the street away from the sun, their faces shaded in shadow, heading deeper and deeper into the Fire Colony. They left their old selves behind them, and walked into a strange, new, unfamiliar world. The world of grey buildings and metal structures, where clouds hung over even though no rain beckoned. They were heading into the future, and all the uncertainties it held.

**End of Chapter Two**

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**Insert Chapter Three to continue…**

**_Avatar: The Last Airbender _**Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06

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**Author's Note: **That's it for Chapter Two. Firstly, I feel the need to apologise for how utterly depressing this ending is. I'm not really satisfied with it, but I'm a little nerve-wracked and caffeinated if that's any excuse. Quite frankly I just want it finished. I might replace it if I feel the urge to put something better in its place. Hopefully next Chapter will be more fun: to be entitled 'The God of Steel'. Return of the Zuko/Azula side-stories, which are always fun. I'm not sure when I'll get around to it. My life's not getting any less busy anytime soon.

Actually, I might consider doing something else apart from the Book 3 stories, something more light-hearted. This bleakness is getting ME down. Let's see how it pans out.

Still, I hope you enjoyed the ride...if 'enjoyed' is the right word. Maybe 'endured' is more accurate.

I might feel better tomorrow. yawwwwn stretch arms collapse!


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